spec
noun
Usually specs specification.
Showing results for spec.
Search instead for
specking.
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:
Drivability of the spec two in Zandvoort was noticeably worse, too, although it had made a step forward in Italy.
From BBC ● Sep. 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
“First quarter gross margins reflect the impact of higher incentives as the company responded to competitive market dynamics and successfully worked to reduce excess spec inventory,” PulteGroup said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 23, 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
“Did you read over the company’s brochure and the spec sheets? The Nexus-6 brain unit they’re using now is capable of selecting within a field of two trillion constituents, or ten million separate neural pathways.”
From "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick
“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
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 Rudyard Kipling
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
A mixture containing 1.055 vols. of spec. gr.
From Scientific American Supplement, No. 286, June 25, 1881 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
The company has said it hopes that the R2’s specs will help motivate people who hadn’t considered EVs in the past.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 16, 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
She leaned over to see—it was his pair of specs and he was wiping them with his handkerchief.
From "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers
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
It’s built a loyal fanbase around nice looking all-in-one portable projectors that are reasonably specced yet still inexpensive.
From The Verge ● Nov. 24, 2021
It’s a bit specced down, though, including just an RTX 3050 Ti and 16GB of RAM.
From The Verge ● Sep. 30, 2021
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
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
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
Through the fly- specked screen-door, I could see that the arms of Momma’s apron jiggled from the vibrations of her humming.
From "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou
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
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
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 Lewis Wallace
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.
