specialize

Students and scholars specialize in something: the verb usually takes in and a field, as in specialize in marine biology. It can also stand alone, the field left unsaid. The Journal of Education in 1881 reports schools that 'will not allow their scholars to specialize', then adds that with four hours of mathematics a week 'even a Newton' would not go up to Cambridge knowing much.

The commercial use, in which a firm or trade narrows what it offers. The Pall Mall Gazette in 1908 writes of firms that had specialized in the manufacture of "heavies". The verb usually takes in plus the product or trade, but it can also stand alone, as in House of Cards (1990): "Do you specialize at all?" Unlike focusing one's study, it narrows what is sold rather than what is learned.

Biology uses it for the division of labor inside a living thing. 'On the Structure and Functions of the Organs of Respiration' (1835) puts it plainly: in the lowest orders several functions are blended in one simple apparatus, and higher up the scale they are specialized, or separated. Here a structure is often specialized for a task. In the intransitive 'become distinct' use, the cells do the specializing themselves.

The broad meaning that the scholar's use and the trader's use narrow down: a thing grows apart from the common type by taking on one job. Asa Gray's Botanical Text-Book writes of cells 'specialized for propagation', the ones botanists call spores. Followed by for, the verb names that job. The -ize spelling is the American one and also Britain's Oxford spelling.

Here someone else does the narrowing: one person specializes another. In Andrea L. Loewenstein's 'Voices in the Night' (1981), a hospital worker is 'specializing' a sixteen-year-old as part of an intensive care program. The word is set off in inverted commas, as if it were program jargon. Most readers expect the 'focus one's study' use, so the transitive version can sound technical.

An ironic use that treats a habit or failing as if it were a profession. The Evening Independent of Massillon, Ohio, wrote in 1923 that 'Watson specializes in adiposeness; none of his chorus beauties may be considered featherweights.' The joke depends on the businesslike verb. Used of a person's behavior, it nearly always carries a sneer, so reserve it for criticism or teasing.