specimen

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments  · 
“
This must be a scarce bird, as the specimen was the only one seen.

View all »
Definitions (10)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. noun An individual, item, or part representative of a class, genus, or whole. See Synonyms at example.
  2. noun A sample, as of tissue, blood, or urine, used for analysis and diagnosis.
  3. noun Informal An individual; a person: a disagreeable specimen.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (4)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (2)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • The length of this specimen was about 250 μm (its foot is cut off in this picture). —  SNAIL'S TALES
  • It follows that each point in the specimen is therefore represented by a corresponding point in the image.
  • This specimen was a passerby on the ship Skandi Neptune in the Gulf of Mexico Jan4 / 09. —  What's That Bug?
  • Ms. Evans says finding a doctor to collect the specimen was a bit of a challenge, but Dr. Elizabeth Houser of the Austin Urology Clinic agreed. —  Firstcoastnews.com Local News
  • "With a head like the giant Cambrian aquatic predator Anomalocaris and a body like a modern arthropod, the specimen is the only known example of this unusual creature," Derek Briggs, who is the director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale and also an author of the recent paper detailing the find, published in a recent edition of the journal Science, explains. —  Softpedia News - Global
More examples »
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 247 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Add a related word »
Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

collection ·  example ·  sample ·  variety ·  piece ·  species ·  description ·  picture ·  illustration ·  fragment ·  aspect ·  remain

Used in the same contextWord Family

specimen:   specimens
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Latin, example, from specere, to look at; see spek- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. = French spécimen = Spanish especimen, from Latin specimen, that by which a thing is known, a mark, token, proof, from specere, see: see species.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »
/ˈspɛsɪmɛn/
by American Heritage

Charts
frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word a few times a week.

Recently looked up

foreknowledge · big-boned · telemarketing · smartly · Colophon

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

Der dicke Dachdecker deckte dir dein Dach, drum dank dem dicken Dachdecker, dass der dicke Dachdecker dir dein Dach deckte. · weitläufig · und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, so leben sie noch heute · redescheu · selbstverständlich