Word.ws English Dictionary

differentia

UK/dɪfəˈɹɛnʃɪə/

differentia noun: a distinguishing feature which marks a species off from other members of the same genus.

Noun

differentia (plural differentiae)

  1. A distinguishing feature which marks a species off from other members of the same genus.
    • That character, it seems to me, should be regarded as the practically important differentia of religion for our purpose; and just what it is can easily be brought out by comparing the mind of an abstractly conceived Christian with that of a moralist similarly conceived.1902, William James, “Lecture II: Circumscription of the Topic”, in The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature […] , New York, N.Y.; London: Longmans, Green, and Co. […], →OCLC...
    • If genera are different and co-ordinate, their differentiae are themselves different in kind. Take as an instance the genus ‘animal’ and the genus ‘knowledge’. ‘With feet’, ‘two-footed’, ‘winged’, ‘aquatic’, are differentiae of ‘animal’; the species of knowledge are not distinguished by the same...1928, E. M. Edghill, Categories, translation of original by Aristotle

Examples of differentia in a sentence

  • If genera are different and co-ordinate, their differentiae are themselves different in kind.1928, E. M. Edghill, Categories, translation of original by Aristotle:
  • In the case of a word like “surfboard,” the differentiae seem pretty clear.2017, Kory Stamper, Word By Word, Vintage, published 2018, page 116:

Forms of differentia

pluraldifferentiae

Origin of differentia

From Latin differentia. Doublet of difference.

Questions about differentia

What does differentia mean?
Differentia means a distinguishing feature which marks a species off from other members of the same genus.
How do you use differentia in a sentence?
If genera are different and co-ordinate, their differentiae are themselves different in kind.
What part of speech is differentia?
Differentia is a noun.
How do you pronounce differentia?
Differentia is pronounced /dɪfəˈɹɛnʃɪə/ (UK).
What is the plural of differentia?
The plural of differentia is differentiae.

Words near differentia in the dictionary

  1. different stories
  2. different story
  3. different strokes
  4. different strokes for different folks
  5. differentation
  6. differentia
  7. differentiabilities
  8. differentiability
  9. differentiable
  10. differentiable manifold
  11. differentiable manifolds

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: differentia (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “differentia.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/differentia. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.