Specimen

Specimen

Noun · /ˈspesɪmən/ · an individual example taken from a group to represent or be examined

Definition

A specimen is a single example of something — typically collected, preserved, or examined as representative of its kind. In science, a specimen might be a tissue sample, an insect pinned under glass, a mineral extracted from a rock face, or a blood sample taken for analysis. In law, a specimen signature is a sample of your handwriting kept on file to verify future documents. In everyday use, a specimen can be any example of a type, sometimes with an edge of irony: a fine specimen of laziness or a curious specimen of office politics. The word always implies that the item is being observed, evaluated, or used as evidence for something larger than itself.

Origin

Specimen comes directly from Latin specimen, meaning a mark, sign, or example, derived from specere — to look at or observe. The Latin root specere is one of the most productive in English, giving us also spectacle, inspect, expect, and species. A specimen was originally that which you look at to understand a broader category. The word entered scientific English in the seventeenth century as natural history and anatomy developed systematic methods of collecting and labelling examples of the natural world. By the eighteenth century it was standard vocabulary in every scientific discipline.