Species

Part of speech: noun (n.)

1. Visible or sensible presentation; appearance; a sensible percept received by the imagination; an image. [R.] "The species of the letters illuminated with indigo and violet." Sir I. Newton. Wit, . . . the faculty of imagination in the writer, which searches over all the memory for the species or ideas of those things which it designs to represent. Dryden.

2. A group of individuals agreeing in common attributes, and designated by a common name; a conception subordinated to another conception, called a genus, or generic conception, from which it differs in containing or comprehending more attributes, and extending to fewer individuals. Thus, man is a species, under animal as a genus; and man, in its turn, may be regarded as a genus with respect to European, American, or the like, as species.

3. In science, a more or less permanent group of existing things or beings, associated according to attributes, or properties determined by scientific observation.

4. A sort; a kind; a variety; as, a species of low cunning; a species of generosity; a species of cloth.

5. Coin, or coined silver, gold, ot other metal, used as a circulating medium; specie. [Obs.] There was, in the splendor of the Roman empire, a less quantity of current species in Europe than there is now. Arbuthnot.

6. A public spectacle or exhibition. [Obs.] Bacon.

7. A component part of compound medicine; a simple.

8. The form or shape given to materials; fashion or shape; form; figure. Burill. Incipient species (Zoöl.), a subspecies, or variety, which is in process of becoming permanent, and thus changing to a true species, usually by isolation in localities from which other varieties are excluded.