Specs

How to spell specs

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce specs

What does specs mean?

1. nounThe detailed technical requirements or features of a product, machine, or job.
2. nounA pair of spectacles worn to correct or aid vision.

Specs in a sentence

• The laptop met every one of the specs the office had requested.

• She could not read the menu without her specs.

• The engineers updated the specs before the prototype was built.

• He cleaned his specs with the cloth from the case.

Where does specs come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a casual clipped plural that does double duty in modern English. In its 'glasses' sense it shortens 'spectacles', which came through Latin spectaculum, 'a show or sight', from spectare, 'to watch or look at repeatedly'; the eyewear meaning grew because the lenses were the things you looked through. In its 'technical detail' sense it shortens 'specifications', from the Latin specificare, 'to set out by kind', built on species, 'a kind or sort', plus facere, 'to make'. Both parent words ultimately trace to the same Latin root specere, 'to look', which also gives us 'inspect', 'spectator' and 'spectacle'. The clipping itself is informal and fairly recent, with the eyewear use recorded from the 1800s and the engineering use spreading through the 1900s. Because it is just the front of a longer word with a plain plural, the spelling holds no trap once you know it is 'spec' plus 's'.

How the word is built

• spec (clipping of either 'spectacles' or 'specifications')
• -s (plural)