spec
noun
Usually specs specification.
Showing results for spec.
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specked.
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:
Degree in hand, Chandrasekaran was hired as a consultant for Boston Consulting Group in Los Angeles and wrote spec scripts in his free time.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 23, 2026
In Boca, a waterfront spec house in the exclusive Royal Palm Yacht & Country Club sold for a record $75 million in May.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 23, 2026
Russell will drive the specification with which he won in Azerbaijan, the week before Malaysia, while Antonelli will run the new spec.
From BBC ● Oct. 8, 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
“I asked Minny three times and she still say she ain’t gone do it. I spec it’s time I believed her.”
From "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett
“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 Catharine Parr Strickland Traill
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
More mihte doð ure helende þenne þe holi word þe he þurh his muð spec. þanne he giueð mannes cuinde.
From Selections from early Middle English, 1130-1250 Part I: Texts by Joseph Hall
People seem more likely to adopt its smart glasses made in collaboration with Ray-Ban because they’re called Meta, rather than Facebook, specs.
From Slate ● Oct. 28, 2026
“Visibility may depend less on advertising to people and more on being clearly described to agents through specs, structured product data and reviews that match the criteria agents ask about,” Kim said.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 8, 2026
"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
“She caught up her knitting, which had dropped out of her hands, gave me a sharp look through her specs, and said, in her short way, ‘Finish the chapter, and don’t be impertinent, miss’.”
From "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott
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
From the looks of things, despite the radically different design, the S22 Ultra appears to be a very similarly specced device to its predecessor.
From The Verge ● Jan. 26, 2022
It’s a bit specced down, though, including just an RTX 3050 Ti and 16GB of RAM.
From The Verge ● Sep. 30, 2021
It can be specced up to a Core i7, 1TB of storage, and 32GB of RAM.
From The Verge ● Sep. 22, 2021
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
Twice on the back nine, Schauffele hit drives straight down the middle, only to arrive at a ball specked with mud, which can throw the next shot off line.
From Seattle Times ● May 20, 2024
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
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
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
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
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
