Spectacular

How to spell spectacular

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce spectacular

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does spectacular mean?

1. adjectiveStrikingly impressive, dramatic, or beautiful to look at.
2. nounAn elaborate and lavishly staged show or production.

Spectacular in a sentence

• adjective

  The hotel offered a spectacular view of the harbour at sunset.

• noun

  The broadcaster aired a fireworks spectacular on new year's eve.

• adjective

  The team made a spectacular recovery in the final quarter.

• noun

  The studio funded a big-budget spectacular for the summer release.

Where does spectacular come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin spectaculum, meaning 'a public show, a sight, a spectacle', which was itself built on the verb spectare, 'to watch or look at intently', a frequentative form of specere, 'to see'. The same specere root quietly underlies a whole family of English words about looking, including 'inspect', 'spectator', 'spectacles', and 'spectrum'. English assembled 'spectacular' in the early 1600s by attaching the adjective ending -ar to the spectacul- stem, originally meaning 'of or relating to a public show'. Over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the sense broadened from 'theatrical' to the modern 'strikingly impressive or dramatic'. The spelling trap lives in that unstressed middle: the -tacu- is easy to slip on, and the ending is -ar rather than the more common -er, because it descends straight from the Latin adjective suffix.

How the word is built

• spectacul- (from Latin spectaculum: a show, sight)
• -ar (adjective suffix: relating to)