Proprium
noun
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A property that applies to all members of a species and only to them, serving to distinguish the species from other species within the same genus, yet is not part of the true definition or the essence of the species.
"(So you can use a proprium to pick out a species—for example, you could say: “a human is a risible mortal animal”—but, in that case, you aren’t picking out the species by its true definition.)"
Example
More examples"(So you can use a proprium to pick out a species—for example, you could say: “a human is a risible mortal animal”—but, in that case, you aren’t picking out the species by its true definition.)"
Etymology
From Latin proprium (“of one's own”).
More for "proprium"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.