"special case" meaning in English

See special case in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: special cases [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} special case (plural special cases)
  1. A specialized instance of a more general phenomenon, category, etc.
    A class of phenomena that is a subset of a more general class.
    Translations (class of phenomena that is a subset of a more general class): særtilfælde [neuter] (Danish), erikoistapaus (Finnish), erityistapaus (Finnish), cas particulier [masculine] (French), specialfall [neuter] (Swedish)
    Sense id: en-special_case-en-noun-jc6RfdHj Disambiguation of 'class of phenomena that is a subset of a more general class': 86 7 7
  2. A specialized instance of a more general phenomenon, category, etc.
    A theorem or other statement that follows directly from a more general statement.
    Translations (theorem or other statement that follows directly from a more general truth): særtilfælde [neuter] (Danish), erikoistapaus (Finnish), erityistapaus (Finnish), specialfall [neuter] (Swedish)
    Sense id: en-special_case-en-noun-0rVK0F7o Disambiguation of 'theorem or other statement that follows directly from a more general truth': 7 86 7
  3. A specialized instance of a more general phenomenon, category, etc.
    Sense id: en-special_case-en-noun-Vx8UOzYL
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Related terms: specific, specificity, specify

Verb

Forms: special cases [present, singular, third-person], special casing [participle, present], special cased [participle, past], special cased [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb}} special case (third-person singular simple present special cases, present participle special casing, simple past and past participle special cased)
  1. (transitive, intransitive, chiefly programming) To treat something as a special case; to handle in an explicitly different way. Tags: intransitive, transitive Categories (topical): Programming Synonyms: special-case
    Sense id: en-special_case-en-verb-4Ck8XOc6 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Entries with translation boxes, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries, Terms with Danish translations, Terms with Finnish translations, Terms with French translations, Terms with Swedish translations Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 13 13 13 60 Disambiguation of Entries with translation boxes: 13 13 13 62 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 10 11 10 68 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 8 8 8 77 Disambiguation of Terms with Danish translations: 12 12 12 65 Disambiguation of Terms with Finnish translations: 17 17 17 50 Disambiguation of Terms with French translations: 13 13 13 62 Disambiguation of Terms with Swedish translations: 16 16 16 52 Topics: computing, engineering, mathematics, natural-sciences, physical-sciences, programming, sciences

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

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Download raw JSONL data for special case meaning in English (6.3kB)

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-02-17 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-02-02 using wiktextract (ca09fec and c40eb85). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.