1. A giving of form to materials; the process of making something new from existing property.
2. A mode of acquisition by which a person made something new from existing material (for example, wine from grapes or a ship from timber). See ACCESSION(4). Pl. specificationes.
“Specificatio. This may be described as acquisition of a new thing by making it, out of materials wholly or partly belonging to another person. We shall deal only with the case in which the materials are wholly another’s. There was in classical law a conflict of opinion on this topic …. Justinian tells us that there had been a media sententia according to which it belonged to the maker if (i) it was irreducible to its former state, and (ii) it really was a nova species, where species means thing. And this view he adopts as law.” W.W. Buckland, A Manual of Roman Private Law 143 (2d ed. 1953).
