Specializing

How to spell specializing

12 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce specializing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does specializing mean?

1. verbConcentrating on or becoming expert in one particular field, product, or activity.

Specializing in a sentence

• The firm is specializing in tax law for small businesses.

• After years of general practice, she began specializing in pediatric care.

Where does specializing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the present participle of 'specialize', which traces back through Latin to the noun species, meaning 'a kind, sort, or appearance', itself rooted in the verb specere, 'to look at'. From species came the Late Latin adjective specialis, 'of a particular kind', which English absorbed by way of Old French as 'special'. The verb 'specialize' was built later, around the early 1600s, to mean focusing on one particular kind of thing, and it gained its modern professional sense (concentrating on a single field of work or study) during the 1800s alongside the growth of trades and sciences. The spelling stress point for native writers is the middle: the unstressed 'ci' sounds like 'sh', and in American and Canadian usage the suffix is the Greek-derived -ize rather than the British -ise. The shared root still surfaces in everyday relatives such as 'species', 'special', and 'especially'.

How the word is built

• speci- (from species: kind, sort)
• -al (adjective)
• -ize (verb suffix, American/Canadian -ize)
• -ing (present participle)

British and American spelling

Specializing is the American spelling. British English spells it specialising.