special creationn.
/ˌspɛʃl krɪˈeɪʃn/, U.S. /ˌspɛʃ(ə)l kriˈeɪʃ(ə)n/ 1. British. Usually with by. The ennobling of a person with a specially created title for a particular purpose or under special circumstances. Now chiefly historical.
ΚΠ
1785 Monthly Rev. 72 563 He was..member of the nobility of the duchy of Parma, by special creation.
1854 Dundee Courier 21 June The present Lord Lovat is descended from the second son of the baron.., and holds this title by special creation in 1837.
1907 Oliver & Boyd's Edinb. Almanac 613 The Peerage of Scotland consists of 86 members... Fifty-one are Peers of England, of Great Britain (by special creation), or of the United Kingdom.
2009 D. Loades Tudor Queens Eng. 3 In the sixteenth century it was possible for a woman to hold a title of nobility in her own right by special creation.
2. The creation of the universe and all species by God, esp. as described in the Bible; the creation of man by God (whether or not the literal truth of the biblical account of the creation is assumed); a doctrine, belief, or hypothesis concerning this; frequently attributive.
ΘΚΠ
the world > existence and causation > creation > [noun] > creation of the world
cosmogony1766
creatio ex nihilo1825
special creation1834
1834 S. Turner Sacred Hist. World II. ii. 23 (heading) All nature is a special creation with specific ends in view.
1834 S. Turner Sacred Hist. World II. v. 103 The special creation of them [sc. human beings] on our earth only, is an indication of some special design in our existence.
1860 T. H. Huxley in Westm. Rev. Apr. 557 The ‘special creation’ hypothesis..presumes every species to have originated from one or more stocks.
1895 W. H. Hudson Introd. Philos. H. Spencer 27 The special-creation hypothesis.
1935 R. A. Knox Barchester Pilgrimage i. 18 Even when he took his pass degree in the humanities, before proceeding to medicine, he was already convinced..that Man was never the subject of a special creation.
1952 P. Mann Systematics Flowering Plants (1963) i. 10 But the Origin of Species was not published until 1859, less than a hundred years ago, and for the preceding thousand years at least special creation has held the field almost unchallenged.
2012 Independent 20 July 18/5 When I was at Queen Mary's High School, Walsall, in the 1940s, we were taught catastrophism, special creation, and Darwin's theory of evolution in our biology lessons, and allowed to make our choice among these theories (Letters 18, 19 July).
Derivatives
ˌspecial creˈationist n. and adj. (a) n. a believer in or adherent of the theory of special creation; (b) adj. of or relating to the theory of special creation.
ΚΠ
1870 J. Hinton Select. from MSS I. 142 The Allopaths represent the special creationists; the Homœopaths the developmentists.
1886 H. Spencer in 19th Cent. May 766 The point of view of the special-creationist.
1918 Jrnl. Philos., Psychol. & Sci. Methods 15 193 The cosmogonies of Melanesia and Polynesia, on the other hand, in their evolutionist as well as special creationist forms, are represented most satisfactorily.
a1933 J. A. Thomson Biol. for Everyman (1934) II. 1004 Huxley considered that palaeontology, or the study of fossil records, constituted the only really sound basis for theories of evolution: yet the foundations of the subject were laid by Baron Cuvier, a convinced ‘special creationist’.
1958 Jrnl. Hist. Ideas 19 370 On a special creationist theory there would be no reason why this generalization should hold.
1975 J. Goulet Human Ape (1977) iii. 18 There are always special creationists,..the fellows who deny that man is an animal.
2000 J. W. Skehan et al. Creation Controv. & Sci. Classroom 54 Special creationist claims have been discredited by the available evidence.
2004 Third Way Summer 33/1 ID is a broad church that includes theistic evolutionists, special creationists, agnostics and adherents of other faiths.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2015; most recently modified version published online June 2022).
<
n.1785