Word.ws English Dictionary

special-case

special-case is the alternative form of special case.

Meaning of special case

Verb

special case (third-person singular simple present special cases, present participle special casing, simple past and past participle special cased)

  1. (ambitransitive) To treat something as a special case; to handle in an explicitly different way.
    • Special-casing the 100 most common words in English might speed things up.1988, Jon Louis Bentley, More Programming Pearls: Confessions of a Coder, page 10

See all 4 meanings of special case

Forms of special-case

third-person singular presentspecial-cases
present participlespecial-casing
past participlespecial-cased
pastspecial-cased

Questions about special-case

What is special-case the alternative form of?
Special-case is the alternative form of special case.

Words near special-case in the dictionary

  1. special victims units
  2. special ward
  3. special wards
  4. special warranty deed
  5. special warranty deeds
  6. special-case
  7. special-cased
  8. special-cases
  9. special-casing
  10. special-purpose entities
  11. special-purpose entity

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: special-case (page history and authors); special case (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: “special-case.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/special-case. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.