specially
part of speech
adverb
meaning for a pupil
1) Specially means for one particular purpose or person: a cake specially made for your birthday. tree →
2) Specially means in a special or unusual way, done with extra care. tree →
3) Specially is also used in everyday talk to mean «especially», particularly (informal). tree →
sense in the lessons
In everyday life and stories «specially» shows that extra effort was made for someone: specially made, specially designed, specially for you. In school writing teachers often prefer «especially» for «particularly». Phrases: specially for, specially made, specially trained.
examples
- I made this card specially for you. tree →
- The bus is specially built for wheelchairs. tree →
- The dogs are specially trained to find people after earthquakes. tree →
- Gran cooked a specially big dinner for us. tree →
- These shoes are specially designed for running. tree →
- I like all fruit, specially strawberries (informal). tree →
- The room was specially decorated for the party. tree →
- He was the presiding deity of plantations and forests, and specially protected the boundaries of fields. tree →
note
«Specially» = for a special purpose (specially made). «Especially» = particularly, above all (I love sport, especially football). In speech they are often mixed up; in careful writing keep them apart. Spelled with double «l».
In the corpora
- Elephants may jump at small sudden things, but the story that they are specially afraid of mice is a myth.
- Anteaters get a specially made mushy mix that copies an ant diet, because a zoo cannot collect enough wild ants.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «specially» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.