spec
noun
Usually specs specification.
spec
1 American
[spek]
/ spɛk /
adjective
verb (used with object)
spec'd,
specked,
specced,
spec'ing,
specking,
speccing
-
to provide specifications for.
The custom turbocharger was spec'd by our mechanic.
-
(in a video game) to create or update (a character) by assigning attributes, skills, weapons, armor, and other items that affect the character’s powers, speed, strength, intelligence, etc..
Do your research before you spec your character, because some builds are just not viable and this game does not allow you to re-spec.
idioms
spec.
2
American
abbreviation
-
special.
-
specially.
-
specifically.
-
specification.
spec.
1
British
abbreviation
-
specification
-
speculation
spec
2
British
/ spɛk /
noun
adjective
spec
More Idioms
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of spec
An Americanism dating back to 1785–95; by shortening
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Custom home builders are reporting stronger market conditions than spec builders, reflecting better conditions in the higher end of the market.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 17, 2026
“I’ve been buying over the past two, three years anyway and making some investments and putting out some new spec homes, but I think we’re going to start getting a little bit more aggressive now.”
From MarketWatch ● May 22, 2026
Meritage, an Arizona-based builder with a roughly $4.8 billion market cap, stands out by building entirely speculative, or spec, homes, which are constructed before a buyer signs a contract.
From Barron's ● Mar. 4, 2026
A complication was that McLaren were not running the latest specification of Mercedes power-unit, so can expect an uplift when they switch in Australia to the latest spec.
From BBC ● Feb. 20, 2026
We told him what the spec four had said about not seeing any fighting.
From "Fallen Angels" by Walter Dean Myers
“The idea is: Okay, we tested it, it’s perfectly good heavy water. It meets spec. We’ll buy a little of this,” U.S.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 22, 2016
He does, however, object to the second: "As a name of opprobrium or reprobation; spec. applied to a grasping or extortionate moneylender or usurer, or a trader who drives hard bargains or deals craftily."
From Time Magazine Archive
I'm afraid our spec. has rather missed fire here, and I don't want to expiate the offence by a spell of carcel.
From The Recipe for Diamonds by Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
Then, having made an appointment for the coming day, and agreed to let the work of shadowing the gambler or, rather, his business, remain a "private spec." to Jarvis, they separated.
From Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter by Lawrence L. Lynch
Poor Moses' gross of green spectacles would not have proved so bad a spec. in Canada*.
From The Backwoods of Canada Being Letters From The Wife of an Emigrant Officer, Illustrative of the Domestic Economy of British America by Catharine Parr Strickland Traill
The Metro covers the hunt for eclipse glasses, dubbing it Black Wednesday as the demand for specs to watch the solar eclipse has resulted in a "money-making bonanza" for shops.
From BBC ● Aug. 11, 2026
Her specs do have a new feature, though: an AI agent voiced by Kylie herself.
From Salon ● Jul. 2, 2026
Gibson might not know specs like RPMs or cylinders, but he said he appreciates the “Fast and Furious” characters’ gorgeous cars, including Dominic Toretto’s 1970 Dodge Charger and Brian O’Connor’s late ’90s Mitsubishi Eclipse.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 8, 2026
Zuckerberg called glasses “the ideal form factor for personal superintelligence,” during his introduction of the latest specs at the company’s Meta Connect conference last year.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 4, 2026
And since I can’t see inside, I am not sure how our system specs compare.
From "A Rover's Story" by Jasmine Warga
With the refreshed, better specced, and cheaper M2 MacBook Air weeks away, and M1 MacBook Pros on sale, it’s been hard to make a case for why anyone should buy the M2 MacBook Pro.
From The Verge ● Jul. 1, 2022
The Eero Pro 6E is $300 and is specced to cover a 2,000-square-foot living space.
From The Verge ● Apr. 5, 2022
By contrast, a similarly specced Class 3 e-bike in the US usually requires... nothing, other than a helmet.
From The Verge ● Apr. 16, 2021
To get a similarly specced Balsam Hill tree at a price close to our pick, you’re limited to the company’s Traditional line, which is made entirely of PVC.
From Slate ● Nov. 23, 2018
Yeah, but the DoD had an RFI for an RFQ that became a RFP, specced by NSA and based upon TD-80-81.
From Terminal Compromise: computer terrorism: when privacy and freedom are the victims: a novel by Winn Schwartau
I’d option-delete those, if I were speccing a car for myself.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 25, 2026
Honor has done a good job at speccing out the hardware of the Magic4 Pro.
From The Verge ● May 12, 2022
These allusions to Ireland are ever-present in the band’s creations, with titles such as “Tir na nÓg” and “Connla’s Well” specked across their discography.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 12, 2025
But the cream-filled doughnuts would be my choice, from the caffeine jolt I got after eating the coffee cream specked with ground beans to a milky, horchata-filled doughnut colored with fall spices.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 4, 2023
He wore a black championship shirt, a white championship hat and goggles still specked with champagne bubbles.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 18, 2022
Rereading Woolf newly attuned to color, I notice that precise tints and hues daub nearly every paragraph: birds' breasts are "specked canary and rose," morning air is "grey-blue," brooches "sea-green."
From Salon ● Feb. 16, 2020
Ten days later, Joe Rantz sat again on a train, looking out through the fly- specked window of the coach, watching a fresh new American calamity begin to unfold.
From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown
Along the Grand Strand, the stretch of beach communities specking the South Carolina coast, people had to be plucked from flooded cars and buildings surrounded by water and piers had been swept into the ocean.
From New York Times ● Sep. 30, 2022
Last week Luftwaffe planes spotted a huge Allied convoy specking the slate-grey sea between Iceland and Norway's North Cape.
From Time Magazine Archive
Balaclava, with its Greek population, its girdle of rocks, and its mild climate, resembles those little towns of the Archipelago that are seen specking the horizon as one sails towards Constantinople.
From Travels in the Steppes of the Caspian Sea, the Crimea, the Caucasus, &c. by Xavier Hommaire de Hell
Thou wouldst deem that all the ravens of Erin were above him, and that flakes of snow were specking the plain before him.”
From Beauties and Antiquities of Ireland by T. O. Russell
We have twenty-one of them up, specking the sky as clearly as a bacteriologist's slide is specked with microbes.
From Letters from France by C. E. W. (Charles Edwin Woodrow) Bean
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
