Spetsiifilisus

Spetsiifilisus is the Estonian noun corresponding to the concept of "specificity" in English. It denotes the quality of being specific, distinct, or narrowly tailored, and is used across scientific, technical, and everyday contexts to describe how selectively a process, measurement, or description applies to particular targets or conditions.

In medicine and statistics, spetsifiilisus refers to the true negative rate of a diagnostic test: the proportion of people without a condition who are correctly identified as negative. It is commonly expressed as true negatives divided by the sum of true negatives and false positives, and is often discussed alongside sensitivity, which measures true positive detection. A high specificity reduces false positive results but may trade off with sensitivity.

In biology and chemistry, spetsiifilisus describes selective interactions such as enzyme or receptor binding, where a molecule preferentially interacts with particular substrates or partners. In ecology it is used for host or habitat specificity, indicating how restricted a species’ associations are. In linguistics and everyday speech it denotes the degree of particularity in reference or description.

The term can be applied to technical domains as well, including computing and engineering, where system behavior or rules apply to narrow cases. Discussions of spetsiifilisus typically consider balance with generality, implications for reliability, and the context-dependent costs and benefits of being highly specific.