special case

special case (plural special cases)

1. A specialized instance of a more general phenomenon, category, etc.

   Antonym: generalization

   • For quotations using this term, see Citations:special case.
   1. A class of phenomena that is a subset of a more general class.

      Coordinate term: species

      • 2013, Luc J. Wintgens, The Law in Philosophical Perspectives: My Philosophy of Law, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 42:

        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.).

   2. A theorem or other statement that follows directly from a more general statement.
      • 2008, Andrei D. Polyanin, Alexander V. Manzhirov, Handbook of Integral Equations: Second Edition, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 356:

        This is a special case of equation 4.9.10 with ${\displaystyle h(x)=K_{v}(\beta x)}$.

      • 2005, James Robert Brown, Philosophy of Mathematics: An Introduction to a World of Proofs and Pictures, Routledge, →ISBN, page 33:

        Clearly, the Pythagorean theorem is a special case of the more general theorem, arrived at by letting r = 1.

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.
   • 1988, Jon Louis Bentley, More Programming Pearls: Confessions of a Coder, page 10:

     Special-casing the 100 most common words in English might speed things up.

   • 1992, Scott Knaster, Keith Rollin, Macintosh Programming Secrets, page 46:

     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?

   • 2009, Peter Seibel, Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming, page 258:

     Other languages have since special-cased that kind of computation with, for example, generators in Python or something where you can yield values.

• special-case