peculiar
Noun pluralpeculiars
Pluralpeculiars
- 1
- 2Typical of or distinctive to a particular place, group, or set of circumstances.
The bright plumage is peculiar to males of this species.
Certain harvest customs are peculiar to small mountain villages.
Similarspecific
Oppositegeneral, common, universal
Note
Here peculiar means "belonging to this and nothing else," and it usually announces itself with to: peculiar to Australia, peculiar to the males of a species. Before a noun the sense can blur. When Thomas Huxley gives gastric juice "the peculiar property" of dissolving food, he means a property of its own, not a strange one. Where a reader might drift toward the "odd" meaning, specific is the safer word.
- 3A quality, right, or property belonging exclusively to one person, group, or thing; a distinguishing characteristic.
That gift for languages was a peculiar of the eldest daughter alone.
The crown claimed minting coins as a peculiar reserved to the king.
Similarprerogative, privilege, characteristic, trait
Note
The noun made from the "one's own" adjective: a peculiar is something reserved to someone alone, often a right no one else may exercise. Robert South's Twelve Sermons calls revenge "so absolutely the peculiar of heaven," meaning a prerogative belonging to God, not to the injured person. The word usually comes with the and of, naming whose peculiar it is.
- 4A parish, chapel, or church lying outside the authority of the bishop of the diocese in which it stands.
Westminster Abbey is a royal peculiar, answering directly to the Crown.
Several medieval peculiars escaped the bishop's oversight entirely.
Note
English church law turns the idea of exclusive property into a map. A peculiar is a parish or church that belongs, in jurisdiction, to someone other than the bishop of its diocese. That authority might be the Crown, an archbishop, or another designated authority, and the royal peculiar is the best-known kind. The plural is peculiars, and the term stays technical, confined to canon law in the UK.
Less common meanings
- 5Belonging to or possessed by one individual alone; not shared with others.
Like a key that opens only one person's door.
The estate was peculiar to the eldest son, passing to no one else.
Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.
1769, King James Bible, Titus ii. 14Similarexclusive, unique, particular
Note
The sense that stays closest to the Latin: pecūliāris, "one's own," from pecūlium, "private property," and behind that pecus, "cattle." It now sounds dated, and its best-known survival is easy to misread. The King James Bible's "a peculiar people" (Titus 2:14) means a people belonging to God, not an eccentric one. Richard Hooker shows the old construction, peculiar unto: what Christianity "hath peculiar unto itself."
- 6Particular or special; suited or appropriate to a specific person, thing, or purpose.
Like the exact tool chosen for one job and no other.
Each rite required vestments peculiar to its solemn purpose.
My fate is Juno's most peculiar care.
1697, Dryden, JohnSimilarspecific, particular, special
Note
A dated sense of singling out, at home in the verse of Milton and Dryden. Milton's Nativity ode has "each peculiar power," meaning each individual one. Dryden's Aeneid of 1697 makes the word gradable: "Juno's most peculiar care" is her special charge, the thing most her own concern. Modern prose hands this work to particular or special, since peculiar in that slot now reads either as archaic or as accidentally odd.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
From Latin pecūliāris ("one's own"), which comes from pecūlium ("private property"), itself from pecus ("cattle").