specificitása

Specificitása, in Hungarian, denotes the property or degree of being specific. It is used in general language to describe how narrowly something targets a particular thing or how clearly a concept identifies a single referent. In scientific and technical contexts, the term is linked to the notion of specificity: the clarity and selectivity with which a criterion, statement, or measurement distinguishes the intended target from others.

In medicine and diagnostics, specificitás (specificity) is defined as the proportion of true negatives among all individuals who do not have the condition. It is calculated as TN / (TN + FP) and is usually expressed as a percentage. A test with high specificity yields few false positives, reducing the chance of wrongly labeling healthy people as diseased. Specificitás is commonly considered together with szenzitivitás (sensitivity), which measures true positives among those with the condition. The two metrics guide screening strategies and diagnostic thresholds, and they are often visualized on a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve.

In linguistics and semantics, specificitás refers to how identifiable or definite the referent of a noun phrase is within a context. A phrase can be described as specific (referring to a unique, identifiable entity) or non-specific (not uniquely identifiable in the given situation). This distinction influences interpretation, quantification, and information structure in discourse.

Etymologically, the term derives from Latin specificitas and entered Hungarian through modern European languages. As a concept, specificity is used across disciplines to express precision, selectivity, and the avoidance of ambiguity.