specie
Pluralspecies (some meanings)
- 1Money in the form of coins made from precious metal that has intrinsic value.
The treaty required payment in specie rather than banknotes.
Merchants preferred specie, since the metal itself held value regardless of any government's promise.
Oppositepaper
Note
Metal money set against paper, its natural opposite. It shares a phrase with the 'in kind' sense: in specie. Recalling 1781 in his 1830 Narrative, Joseph Plumb Martin got 'one month's pay in specie,' meaning in coin. Context separates the two. Payment in specie means coin when the alternative is paper, and the thing itself when the alternative is cash. It is a mass noun, as in Thomas Pynchon's 'a pocketful of specie' in Against the Day (2006).
- 2Kind or type; chiefly in the phrase 'in specie,' meaning in the actual form or thing itself rather than in its monetary equivalent.
The court ordered restitution in specie, requiring return of the original painting rather than its appraised value.
Trustees may transfer assets in specie when selling them would trigger unnecessary tax.
Similarkind
Note
A Latin phrase carried whole into English: speciē is the ablative of species, so in specie means roughly 'in the form itself.' Its native counterpart is in kind, and the two run close. Paying in kind and transferring in specie both mean handing over the thing rather than its price. The coin meaning grows from the same Latin root.
- 3Singular of species. Proscribed: standard usage treats species as both singular and plural.
A caller to the radio show asked what specie of bird was nesting in her gutter.
On the gardening forum, someone asked which specie of fern grows best indoors.
Note
A back-formation that careful writers treat as an error. Species was heard as a plural, and its final s was clipped off. In standard English the singular and plural are the same word: one species of frog, two species of frog. A new specie of frog therefore reads as a slip. Keep specie for the coin meaning, where it is correct.
Practice
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Origins
The word began in the phrase 'in specie', taken from Latin 'speciē', the ablative singular of 'species'. It may be compared to the phrase 'in kind'.
This is a back-formation from 'species' (a plural), where the final 's' was mistakenly understood as a plural ending.