special case

special case (plural special cases)

1. a class of phenomena that is a subset of a more general class
   • 2013, Luc J. Wintgens, The Law in Philosophical Perspectives: My Philosophy of Law, Springer Science & Business Media (→ISBN), page 42

     Habermas, e.g., put forward that the legal discourse should not be understood as a special case of the moral discourse because in law next to moral reasons there are also ethical and pragmatic reasons to play a legitimate part (J. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 230 ff.).

2. a theorem or other statement that follows directly from a more general statement
   • 2008, Andrei D. Polyanin, Alexander V. Manzhirov, Handbook of Integral Equations: Second Edition, CRC Press (→ISBN), page 356

     This is a special case of equation 4.9.10 with ${\displaystyle h(x)=K_{v}(\beta x)}$ .

   • 2005, James Robert Brown, Philosophy of Mathematics: An Introduction to a World of Proofs and Pictures, Routledge (→ISBN), page 33

     Clearly, the Pythagorean theorem is a special case of the more general theorem, arrived at by letting r = 1.

• generalization