Special

How to spell special

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce special

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does special mean?

1. adjectiveBetter, different, or more important than what is usual or ordinary.
2. nounA product, dish, or broadcast offered or made for a particular occasion.

Special in a sentence

• adjective

  The restaurant prepared a special menu for the anniversary dinner.

• noun

  The diner advertised a lunchtime special at a reduced price.

• adjective

  She kept the special china for visitors and holidays.

• noun

  The network aired a holiday special on the last evening of December.

Where does special come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word goes back to the Latin specialis, meaning 'individual' or 'particular', which was built on species, a noun for a 'kind', 'sort', or 'appearance'. That root in turn came from the verb specere, meaning 'to look at', so the underlying idea is something singled out by sight as distinct from the general run of things. English took the word in during the 1200s through Old French especial, and for centuries both 'special' and 'especial' lived side by side with much the same meaning. The same specere root sits inside a large family of look-related words such as 'spectacle', 'inspect', and 'species' itself. The spelling trap is simply that the 'sh' sound is written with the soft 'ci', a legacy of the Latin -cialis ending rather than the more obvious 'sh' or 'ti'.

How the word is built

• speci- (from Latin species: kind, sort, appearance)
• -al (adjective suffix)