Word.ws English Dictionary

special case

special case noun: a specialized instance of a more general phenomenon, category, etc.

Noun

special case (plural special cases)

  1. A specialized instance of a more general phenomenon, category, etc.
    • For quotations using this term, see Citations:special case.
    Antonyms:
    generalization
    1. A class of phenomena that is a subset of a more general class.
      • Habermas, e.g., put forward that the legal discourse should not be understood as a special case of the moral discourse because in law next to moral reasons there are also ethical and pragmatic reasons to play a legitimate part (J. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 230 ff.).2013, Luc J. Wintgens, The Law in Philosophical Perspectives: My Philosophy of Law, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 42
    2. A theorem or other statement that follows directly from a more general statement.
      • This is a special case of equation 4.9.10 with h(x)#61;K#95;v(#92;betax).2008, Andrei D. Polyanin, Alexander V. Manzhirov, Handbook of Integral Equations: Second Edition, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 356
      • Clearly, the Pythagorean theorem is a special case of the more general theorem, arrived at by letting r = 1.2005, James Robert Brown, Philosophy of Mathematics: An Introduction to a World of Proofs and Pictures, Routledge, →ISBN, page 33

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
    • If these programs work as well as they can even without going through QuickDraw, what's the penalty for going around the system and special casing?1992, Scott Knaster, Keith Rollin, Macintosh Programming Secrets, page 46

special case meaning in Tamil

special case in Tamil

தனி நேர்வு, சிறப்பு வகை, சிறப்புவகை

Antonyms of special case

Forms of special case

Noun
pluralspecial cases
Verb
third-person singular presentspecial cases
present participlespecial casing
past participlespecial cased
pastspecial cased
alternative formspecial-case

Questions about special case

What does special case mean?
Special case means a specialized instance of a more general phenomenon, category, etc.
What is special case in Tamil?
Special case in Tamil is தனி நேர்வு, சிறப்பு வகை, சிறப்புவகை. See Special case meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is special case?
Special case can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of special case?
The plural of special case is special cases.

Words near special case in the dictionary

  1. special agents
  2. Special Air Service
  3. special area
  4. special areas
  5. Special Branch
  6. special case
  7. special cased
  8. special cases
  9. special casing
  10. special character
  11. special characters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: special case (page history and authors); special case (Tamil Wiktionary) (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.