Definify.com
Webster 1913 Edition
Spectre
{
, Spec′ter
,Spec′tre
}Noun.
1.
Something preternaturally visible; an apparition; a ghost; a phantom.
The ghosts of traitors from the bridge descend,
With bold fanatic
With bold fanatic
specters
to rejoice. Dryden.
2.
(Zool.)
(a)
The tarsius.
(b)
A stick insect.
Specter bat
(Zool.)
, any phyllostome bat.
– Specter candle
(Zool.)
, a belemnite.
– Specter shrimp
(Zool.)
, a skeleton shrimp. See under
Skeleton
.Definition 2024
spectre
spectre
English
Noun
spectre (plural spectres)
- British standard spelling of specter.
- The spectre is a ghost of a decapitated young man.
- 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
- A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.
- 1849, Charlotte Brontë, Shirley
- To this extenuated spectre, perhaps, a crumb is not thrown once a year, but when ahungered and athirst to famine—when all humanity has forgotten the dying tenant of a decaying house—Divine Mercy remembers the mourner […]