specter
Americannoun
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specters
plural
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a visible incorporeal spirit, especially one of a terrifying nature; ghost; phantom; apparition.
- Synonyms:
- shade
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some object or source of terror or dread.
the specter of disease or famine.
Synonym Usage
See ghost.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of specter
First recorded 1595–1605; from Latin spectrum “appearance, form”; see spectrum
Explanation
A specter means a ghostly apparition, a ghost itself, or simply an idea that people find frightening. You can give yourself nightmares if you listen to too many stories about ghostly specters appearing in dark windows. Specters as fears are the kind that tend to loom on the edge of our minds, lying dormant for awhile, then raising their ugly heads. It can be hard to sleep if you think too much about the specter of a terrorist attack, or the specter that your blabbermouth cousin might spill the beans to your parents about the night you two took your dad's car without asking. The word can also be spelled spectre.
Vocabulary lists containing specter
The Grim Reader: Wicked Words of Grave Importance for Halloween
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A Christmas Carol
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Uncanny, Creepy, or Downright Scary: Words For Halloween
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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:
But they raise the specter among the public of rogue computers acting on their own.
From Barron's ● Jul. 29, 2026
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the death of the U.S. servicemembers “stiffens our resolve”, raising the specter of escalating American attacks and a further challenge to normalizing transit through the Strait of Hormuz.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026
The specter of SpaceX is hanging over AT&T, Verizon and other telecommunications stocks as investors fear an Elon Musk-led industry shakeup.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 2, 2026
Civil libertarians say the use of this tracking data raises the specter of mass surveillance on innocent people.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 29, 2026
Some twisted part of me maybe believed that Mirjam Roodveldt was a specter created by Mrs. Janssen.
From "Girl in the Blue Coat" by Monica Hesse
Donors respond to big claims and menacing specters.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 29, 2026
In the latter, he appeared as the Fat Friar, one of the specters who haunt the halls of Hogwarts.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 10, 2025
Early in “Pictures of Ghosts,” an exhilarating documentary about specters onscreen and off, the Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho, pulls out a VHS tape.
From New York Times ● Jan. 25, 2024
The bus plowed through dust on the road winding through the Hanford Site, the horizon dotted with specters of reactors that had been dismantled or “cocooned.”
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 22, 2023
A block away lived another Hasidic sect, Jews from southern Poland, who walked the Brooklyn streets like specters, with their black hats, long black coats, black beards, and earlocks.
From "The Chosen" by Chaim Potok
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.
