Spectral

How to spell spectral

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce spectral

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does spectral mean?

1. adjectiveResembling or relating to a ghost; eerie and ghostly in appearance.
2. adjectiveRelating to a spectrum, especially the range of colours or wavelengths in light or sound.

Spectral in a sentence

• A spectral figure seemed to drift across the empty hallway.

• The telescope records the spectral data needed to identify distant stars.

• The abandoned house had a spectral stillness that unsettled the surveyors.

• Engineers measured the spectral output of the new lighting panels.

Where does spectral come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grows from the Latin spectrum, which meant an appearance, an image, or an apparition, and which itself came from the verb specere, meaning 'to look at' or 'to see'. The same specere root gives English a whole family of seeing words, including 'spectator', 'inspect', and 'spectacle'. In the 1600s the scientist Isaac Newton borrowed 'spectrum' for the band of colours produced when light passes through a prism, treating it as the visible 'appearance' of light. The adjective 'spectral' followed, and it carried both threads of meaning: the ghostly sense of something that merely appears (a phantom or apparition) and the scientific sense of belonging to a spectrum. Because both meanings descend from the idea of an 'appearance', the spelling keeps the -ctr- cluster of its Latin parent, which is the part writers most often stumble over.

How the word is built

• spectr- (from Latin spectrum: appearance, apparition)
• -al (adjective suffix)