special case meaning: definition, quotations

special case

noun

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

For quotations using this term, see Citations:special case.

A class of phenomena that is a subset of a more general class.

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

A theorem or other statement that follows directly from a more general statement.

This is a special case of equation 4.9.10 with h(x)#61;K#95;v(#92;betax).2008, Andrei D. Polyanin, Alexander V. Manzhirov, Handbook of Integral Equations: Second Edition, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 356:
Clearly, the Pythagorean theorem is a special case of the more general theorem, arrived at by letting r = 1.2005, James Robert Brown, Philosophy of Mathematics: An Introduction to a World of Proofs and Pictures, Routledge, →ISBN, page 33:

Related terms: specific, specificity, specify

special case

verb

Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Programming, Sciences Ambitransitive To treat something as a special case; to handle in an explicitly different way.

Special-casing the 100 most common words in English might speed things up.1988, Jon Louis Bentley, More Programming Pearls: Confessions of a Coder, page 10:
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?1992, Scott Knaster, Keith Rollin, Macintosh Programming Secrets, page 46:

1 more example

Other languages have since special-cased that kind of computation with, for example, generators in Python or something where you can yield values.2009, Peter Seibel, Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming, page 258: