Specification

How to spell specification

13 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce specification

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does specification mean?

1. nounA precise, detailed statement of the requirements, materials, or standards something must meet.

Specification in a sentence

• The builder followed the architect's specification to the millimetre.

• Every part must conform to the engineering specification before shipping.

Where does specification come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word goes back to the Latin verb specere, meaning 'to look at' or 'to observe', the same root that gives us 'inspect', 'spectacle', and 'species'. From specere came the medieval Latin verb specificare, 'to mention or describe in detail', built by joining the idea of 'kind' or 'sort' (species) with facere, 'to make', so the literal sense was 'to make particular'. The action noun specificatio described the act of stating something explicitly, item by item. English took it in through Old French and legal and scholarly Latin during the 1600s, where it came to mean a detailed statement of requirements or particulars, especially in patents, building, and engineering. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the unstressed '-cifi-' sounds like a vague schwa, so writers often drop a letter or swap the order, even though the parts spec-i-fic-ation are perfectly regular once you see them.

How the word is built

• spec- (from specere: to look at)
• -ific- (from facere: to make)
• -ation (noun of action)