specter
pronunciation
How to pronounce specter in British English:
UK ['spektə]
How to pronounce specter in American English:
US [ˈspɛktɚ]
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- Noun:
- a mental representation of some haunting experience
- a ghostly appearing figure
Word Origin
- specter (n.)
- c. 1600, "frightening ghost," from French spectre "an image, figure, ghost" (16c.), from Latin spectrum "appearance, vision, apparition" (see spectrum). Figurative sense "object of dread" is from 1774.
Example
- 1. A specter is haunting the world-the return of capitalism .
- 2. Chaney was left alone for months , haunted by the specter of the feds .
- 3. No man , if he be truthful , can say that the specter of war is banished .
- 4. This realpolitik world would be stable : the specter of mutual assured destruction would compel cooperation among powers of relatively similar economic size .
- 5. The specter of race hangs over all of this : will the first black president be wrongly deemed a failure , as the majority of one-term presidents are ?