Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A ghostly apparition; a phantom.
- n. A haunting or disturbing image or prospect: the terrible specter of nuclear war.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A ghostly apparition; a visible incorporeal human spirit; an appearance of the dead as when living. Specters are imagined as disembodied spirits haunting or revisiting the scenes of their mundane life, and showing themselves in intangible form to the living, generally at night, from some overpowering necessity, or for some benevolent or (more usually) malevolent purpose. They are sometimes represented as speaking, but more commonly as only using terrifying or persuasive gestures to induce compliance with their wishes. The word is rarely used for the dissociated soul of a living person.
- n. In zoology: One of many names of gressorial orthopterous insects of the family Phasmidæ; a walking-stick or stick-insect; a specter-insect.
- n. The specter-bat.
- n. The specter-lemur.
- n. A specter-shrimp.
- n. Synonyms Apparition, Phantom, etc. See ghost.
Wiktionary
- n. A ghostly apparition.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Something preternaturally visible; an apparition; a ghost; a phantom.
- n. The tarsius.
- n. A stick insect.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a ghostly appearing figure
- n. a mental representation of some haunting experience
Etymologies
- French spectre, from Latin spectrum, appearance, apparition; see spectrum.
Examples
“May 10th, 2010 4: 32 pm ET arlen specter is still alive?”
“I can not believe specter is calling out his opponent for "not being a real democrat.”
“August 11th, 2009 4: 36 pm ET arlen specter is at the current moment having explained to him the increasing debt by an 18 year old at the lewisburg town hall.”
“His life and loved ones are all lost to him, but a specter from the past awakens him to an identity more than 3200 years ago.”
“I am pretty sure that the scene they showed with night owl and silk specter is actually a dream that Night Owl has. and yes i do know that they are going with the nukes instead of the giant squid monster.”
“Of course, Conlin, in the midst of the dark revelry, meets the Bone Man; and the specter is very real; and the encounter leaves Conlin forever changed (ominous chuckle).”
“A specter is stalking the Western world, and it looks a lot like Grandma.”
“Lest there be any doubt about the semantic authority of these b-t-t associations, it should be observed that the Marquis's first step upon being confronted with this report about the specter is to place a bed in the room in question and to spend the night there himself.”
“In this final encounter with the ghost, the specter is for the first time described not simply by association — that is, in the thrice-repeated "it sounded as if someone lying on the floor got up …" — but with the facticity of agency:”
“To paraphrase Karl Marx, a specter is haunting Europe ...”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘specter’.
bilby See also spectre, which is apparently fey. Oct 27, 2008