different between own vs specific

English

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /???n/
• (US) enPR: ?n, IPA^(key): /?o?n/
• (Hong Kong) IPA^(key): /?u?/
• Rhymes: -??n

Etymology 1

From Middle English owen, a?en, from Old English ?gen (“own, proper, peculiar”), from Proto-West Germanic *aigan (“own”), from Proto-Germanic *aiganaz (“own”), from Proto-Indo-European *h?ey?- (“to have, possess”).

Alternative forms

• 'n (informal contraction)

Adjective

own

2. Belonging to; possessed; proper to. Often marks a possessive determiner as reflexive, referring back to the subject of the clause or sentence.
3. Not shared

4. (obsolete) Peculiar, domestic.
5. (obsolete) Not foreign.

Usage notes

• Often used for implication of ownership, often with emphasis. In modern usage, it always follows a possessive determiner, or a noun in the possessive case.

Derived terms

• be one's own worst enemy
• come into one's own
• hoist by one's own petard
• one's own boss
• on one's own

Translations

Etymology 2

A back-formation from owner, owning and own (adjective). Compare Old English ?gnian, Dutch eigenen, German eignen, Swedish ägna.

Verb

own (third-person singular simple present owns, present participle owning, simple past and past participle owned)

1. (transitive) To have rightful possession of (property, goods or capital); to have legal title to.

   I own this car.

2. (transitive) To have recognized political sovereignty over a place, territory, as distinct from the ordinary connotation of property ownership.

3. (transitive) To defeat or embarrass; to overwhelm.

   I will own my enemies.

   If he wins, he will own you.

4. (transitive) To virtually or figuratively enslave.
5. (online gaming, slang) To defeat, dominate, or be above, also spelled pwn.
6. (transitive, computing, slang) To illicitly obtain superuser or root access to a computer system, thereby having access to all of the user files on that system; pwn.
7. (intransitive) To admit, concede, grant, allow, acknowledge, confess; not to deny.
   • 1913, D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, chapter 5

     They learned how perfectly peaceful the home could be. And they almost regretted—though none of them would have owned to such callousness—that their father was soon coming back.

8. (transitive) To admit; concede; acknowledge.
   • 1611, Shakespeare, The Tempest, v.:

     Two of those fellows you must know and own.

   • 1843, Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, book 2, ch. 1, Jocelin of Brakelond

     It must be owned, the good Jocelin, spite of his beautiful childlike character, is but an altogether imperfect 'mirror' of these old-world things!

9. (transitive) To take responsibility for.
10. (transitive) To answer to.
11. (transitive) To recognise; acknowledge.

    to own one as a son

12. (transitive) To claim as one's own.
13. (intransitive, Britain dialectal) To confess.

Synonyms

• (have rightful possession of): to possess
• (defeat): beat, defeat, overcome, overthrow, vanquish, have, take, best

Antonyms

• (admit): disown

Derived terms

Translations

References

• 1896, Universal Dictionary of the English Language [UDEL], v3 p3429:

  To possess by right; to have the right of property in; to have the legal right or rightful title to.

• 1896, ibid., UDEL
• 1896, ibid., UDEL
• 1896, ibid., UDEL

Anagrams

• NOW, NWO, now, won

Portuguese

Interjection

own

1. aw (used to express affection)

Quotations

For quotations using this term, see Citations:own.

English

Alternative forms

• specifick (obsolete)

Etymology

From Old French specifique, from Late Latin specificus (“specific, particular”), from Latin speci?s (“kind”) + faci? (“make”).

Pronunciation

• (General American, UK) IPA^(key): /sp??s?f.?k/, /sp??s?f.?k/
• Rhymes: -?f?k
• Hyphenation: spe?cif?ic

Adjective

specific (comparative more specific, superlative most specific)

1. explicit or definite
2. (sciences) pertaining to a species
   • 2008, Richard Dawkins, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, Oxford 2009, p. 3:

     Science and literature, then, are the two achievements of Homo sapiens that most convincingly justify the specific name.

3. (taxonomy) pertaining to a taxon at the rank of species
4. special, distinctive or unique
5. intended for, or applying to, a particular thing
6. Serving to identify a particular thing (often a disease or condition), with little risk of mistaking something else for it.

   a highly specific test, specific and nonspecific symptoms

7. being a remedy for a particular disease

   Quinine is a specific medicine in cases of malaria.
8. (immunology) limited to a particular antibody or antigen
9. (physics) of a value divided by mass (e.g. specific orbital energy)
10. (physics) similarly referring to a value divided by any measure which acts to standardize it (e.g. thrust specific fuel consumption, referring to fuel consumption divided by thrust)
11. (physics) a measure compared with a standard reference value by division, to produce a ratio without unit or dimension (e.g. specific refractive index is a pure number, and is relative to that of air)

Synonyms

• (explicit, definite): express, monosemous, unambiguous; see also Thesaurus:explicit
• (special, distinctive or unique): singular; see also Thesaurus:unique
• (intended for a particular thing): peculiar, singular; see also Thesaurus:specific

Antonyms

• unspecific, nonspecific
• (intended for a particular thing): broad, general, generic, universal; see also Thesaurus:generic

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• generic

Noun

specific (plural specifics)

1. A distinguishing attribute or quality.
2. A remedy for a specific disease or condition.
   • 1968, Charles Portis, True Grit:

     I had no unreasonable fear of bats, […] yet I knew them too for carriers of the dread “Hydrophobia,” for which there was no specific.

3. Specification
4. (in the plural) The details; particulars.

Further reading

• specific in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• specific in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• specific at OneLook Dictionary Search

Romanian

Etymology

From French spécifique.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /spe?t??i.fik/

Adjective

specific m or n (feminine singular specific?, masculine plural specifici, feminine and neuter plural specifice)

1. specific

   Antonym: nespecific

Declension

Related terms

• specificitate