spec
noun
Usually specs specification.
Showing results for spec.
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specced.
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:
“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
In Bel-Air, a 105,000-square-foot spec house was marketed for $500 million, but by the time it was finished, it was already falling into disrepair and ended up being auctioned off for $141 million.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 1, 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
The spec four looked me up and down.
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
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 Traill, Catharine Parr Strickland
You can't, just because you happen to be made prefects, haul up seniors and jaw 'em on spec., like a house-master.
From Stalky & Co. by Kipling, Rudyard
Such is the credulity of the age, that the author of the "Coming Struggle" will, probably, realise by this sixpenny "spec.," a very nice little competency.
From Punch - Volume 25 (Jul-Dec 1853) by Various
"Chaplain Emma Roberts, 54, and the Labour chief, 56, share the same haircut, brows, thick-rimmed specs and smile," the paper reports, fashioning a game of "spot the difference".
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
In short: The deal’s all about workflows, like storyboarding and tech specs.
From Salon ● Jun. 23, 2026
But no one inside the team had ever laid eyes on the full set of rules and specs that would govern the sport in 2026.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 7, 2026
The MacBook Neo costs less because its specs are less impressive than other Apple laptops.
From Barron's ● Mar. 4, 2026
"And I've been wearing specs since I was three."
From "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding
Image: Dell That webcam is attached to a decently specced display: it’s 31.5 inches, IPS, and runs at 60Hz.
From The Verge ● Jan. 4, 2022
It’s a bit specced down, though, including just an RTX 3050 Ti and 16GB of RAM.
From The Verge ● Sep. 30, 2021
For most people, I don’t think the 8,000Hz refresh rate makes enough of a difference to warrant recommending the Huntsman V2 over an otherwise similarly specced competitor.
From The Verge ● Sep. 24, 2021
That’s $130 more than a similarly specced Go without LTE — plus whatever you’ll spend on data.
From The Verge ● Dec. 19, 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 Schwartau, Winn
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
It’s a thinner pizza with a distinctively “soft and fluffy” crust that’s been brushed with garlic butter and specked with Grana Padano cheese.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 24, 2023
The 16-inch trout he brought to the net was brilliant to behold — plump, with a body of yellow and reddish orange, specked with fine black spots.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 13, 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
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 Russell, T. O.
Between Fanar, the last northern point of lookout over the Black Sea, and Galata, down on the Golden Horn, there are about thirty hamlets, villages and cities specking the European shore of the Bosphorus.
From The Prince of India — Volume 02 by Wallace, Lewis
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 Bean, C. E. W. (Charles Edwin Woodrow)
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.
