type specimen

noun

: a specimen or individual designated as type of a species or lesser group and serving as the final criterion of the characteristics of that group

Example Sentences

Recent Examples on the Web

Chomicki also discovered the sweet watermelon type specimen was not a sweet watermelon. —Bridget Alex, Smithsonian Magazine, 3 Nov. 2022

Pressed and mounted on cardstock, the scraggly leaves became sweet watermelon’s type specimen—a particular preserved organism treated as the official representative of its species. —Bridget Alex, Smithsonian Magazine, 3 Nov. 2022

Centinela Ridge became the type specimen for a particular kind of extinction, but species all over the world are vulnerable to it. —Kiona N. Smith, Forbes, 17 Apr. 2022

Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. —Chase Peterson-withorn, Forbes, 6 Apr. 2021

Prasad has ruled out donating his type specimens—which defined new species of dinosaurs and early mammals—to his own University of Delhi, one of the best in the nation. —Sanjay Kumar, Science | AAAS, 4 Apr. 2018

But since Linnaeus’ body was never exhumed from its resting place in Sweden, his posthumous status as the human type specimen is more of a formality than a practicality. —Ellen Airhart, WIRED, 10 Mar. 2018

Neither the photographer nor the subjects agreed to provide our digital type specimens. —Ellen Airhart, WIRED, 10 Mar. 2018

But having the type specimen from the greater Miami area is still pretty cool. —Jenny Staletovich, miamiherald, 19 Jan. 2018

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Word History

First Known Use

1852, in the meaning defined above