specificity

From specific +‎ -ity.^[1] Compare French spécificité.

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /spɛsɪˈfɪsɪti/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

specificity (usually uncountable, plural specificities)

1. The state of being specific rather than general.
   • 2024 October 14, Patrick Eddington, James Craven, Police Want the Password to Your Phone‎^[1]:

     Congress must set a clear standard: Police should prove with specificity what's on your phone before forcing it open, and only after the device's owner has consulted with a lawyer. Doing so would provide citizens a means to ensure police follow warrant requirements without sacrificing law enforcement's ability to pursue the crime they're investigating.

2. The extent to which a characteristic is specific to a given person, place, or thing; thus:
   1. (statistics) The probability, in a binary classification test, of a true negative being correctly identified.

      Coordinate term: sensitivity

   2. (medicine) The extent to which a particular diagnostic test is specific for, or a symptom or sign is specific to, a given condition.

• specificness (much less common)

• nonspecificity
• genericity

• (statistics, binary probability): sensitivity

• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “specificity”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.
• “specificity”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.