Species

How to spell species

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce species

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does species mean?

1. nounA group of living organisms whose members can interbreed and are classified together as a distinct kind.
2. nounA particular sort, kind, or category of something.

Species in a sentence

• The rainforest is home to thousands of insect species found nowhere else.

• This odd species of humour rarely lands well in a formal meeting.

• Conservationists are working to protect every endangered species in the wetland.

• The report described a new species of financial fraud spreading online.

Where does species come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes straight from the Latin species, which originally meant 'a seeing, a sight, or an appearance', and ultimately from the verb specere, meaning 'to look at'. In Latin the noun broadened from 'outward appearance' to 'a particular form or kind' of thing, since things of the same outward form were grouped together. English adopted it in the late 1300s, at first in the general sense of a sort or type, and the same shape served as both singular and plural just as in Latin. The narrow biological meaning, a distinct class of living organisms, was fixed by naturalists in the 1600s and 1700s and made famous by Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species'. The spec- root still glints in close relatives such as 'spectacle', 'inspect', and 'special', and that hidden 'c' is exactly the letter writers must remember, since the word sounds like 'spee-sheez' yet is spelled with -cies.

How the word is built

• spec- (from Latin specere: to look at)
• -ies (Latin noun ending)