PARTICULARITY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does particularity mean? 

• PARTICULARITY (noun)
  The noun PARTICULARITY has 1 sense:

1. the quality of being particular and pertaining to a specific case or instance

  Familiarity information: PARTICULARITY used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PARTICULARITY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The quality of being particular and pertaining to a specific case or instance

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

particularity; specialness

Context example:

the particularity of human situations

Hypernyms ("particularity" is a kind of...):

quality (an essential and distinguishing attribute of something or someone)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "particularity"):

specificity (the quality of being specific rather than general)

specificity (the quality of being specific to a particular organism)

Antonym:

generality (the quality of being general or widespread or having general applicability)

Derivation:

particular (unique or specific to a person or thing or category)

particular (separate and distinct from others of the same group or category)

 Context examples 

You must have been aware, continued Sir Thomas presently, you must have been some time aware of a particularity in Mr. Crawford's manners to you.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

She walked eagerly on as she spoke; and Elinor, to screen Marianne from particularity, as she felt almost certain of its not being Willoughby, quickened her pace and kept up with her.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

In that house Elizabeth must be first; and she was in the habit of such general observance as "Miss Elliot," that any particularity of attention seemed almost impossible.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

While I, to blind the world to our engagement, was behaving one hour with objectionable particularity to another woman, was she to be consenting the next to a proposal which might have made every previous caution useless?

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Grant, which seemed entirely to engross them, and Mrs. Grant occupied at the tea-table, he began talking of them with more particularity to his other sister.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

But dear Maria has such a strict sense of propriety, so much of that true delicacy which one seldom meets with nowadays, Mrs. Rushworth—that wish of avoiding particularity!

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

The two girls were more at a loss from being younger and in greater awe of their father, who addressed them on the occasion with rather an injudicious particularity.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

As to your brother's behaviour, certainly I was sensible of a particularity: I had been sensible of it some little time, perhaps two or three weeks; but then I considered it as meaning nothing: I put it down as simply being his way, and was as far from supposing as from wishing him to have any serious thoughts of me.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

He and his friend had been out with their guns the chief of the morning, and Tom had taken the opportunity of explaining, with proper apologies for his father's particularity, what was to be expected.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

She was safe in the breakfast-room, with her aunt, when Miss Crawford did come; and the first misery over, and Miss Crawford looking and speaking with much less particularity of expression than she had anticipated, Fanny began to hope there would be nothing worse to be endured than a half-hour of moderate agitation.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)