FromLatindifferentia.Doublet ofdifference.
differentia (pluraldifferentiae)
- (logic, semantics, taxonomy) Adistinguishingfeature whichmarks aspecies off from othermembers of thesamegenus.
1902,William James, “Lecture II: Circumscription of the Topic”, inThe Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature […] , New York, N.Y.; London:Longmans, Green, and Co. […],→OCLC,page45:That character, it seems to me, should be regarded as the practically importantdifferentia of religion for our purpose; and just what it is can easily be brought out by comparing the mind of an abstractly conceived Christian with that of a moralist similarly conceived.
1928, E. M. Edghill,Categories, translation of original by Aristotle:If genera are different and co-ordinate, theirdifferentiae are themselves different in kind. Take as an instance the genus ‘animal’ and the genus ‘knowledge’. ‘With feet’, ‘two-footed’, ‘winged’, ‘aquatic’, aredifferentiae of ‘animal’; the species of knowledge are not distinguished by the same differentiae.
2017,Kory Stamper,Word By Word, Vintage, published2018, page116:In the case of a word like “surfboard,” thedifferentiae seem pretty clear. How is this board different from all other boards?
differentia (pluraldifferentias)
- difference
Fromdifferens +-ia.
differentia f (genitivedifferentiae);first declension
- difference
- diversity
First-declension noun.
differentia
- nominative/accusative/vocativeneuterplural ofdifferēns
- “differentia”, inCharlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879),A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- “differentia”, inCharlton T. Lewis (1891),An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
- "differentia", in Charles du Fresne du Cange’sGlossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
- “differentia”, inGaffiot, Félix (1934),Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
