Spec

How to spell spec

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce spec

What does spec mean?

1. nounAn informal short form of specification: the detailed technical description of how something should be built or supplied.
2. nounAn informal short form of speculation, used mainly in the phrase 'on spec', meaning done as a gamble without a guarantee of payment or success.

Spec in a sentence

• The new laptop matches the spec we ordered.

• She wrote the article on spec and hoped a magazine would buy it.

• The builder worked strictly to the spec in the contract.

• The developer bought the land on spec, betting that prices would rise.

Where does spec come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Spec is a casual clipping that began life in the nineteenth century as a shortened form of two longer words. In its technical sense it stands for specification, which descends from the Latin specificare, meaning to make particular or to describe in detail, itself built on specere, to look at. In the gambling and business sense it stands for speculation, again from Latin and again rooted in specere, the idea being that one looks ahead and takes a chance. English speakers trimmed both long words down to the same blunt syllable, and context now tells the two apart. Because it is simply a four letter chop of a familiar root, the spelling holds no real surprises, which is why the word looks the same in every English dialect.

How the word is built

• clipped short form of specification or speculation; the single syllable spec- traces to Latin specere (to look)