specter – English noun declension

English noun forms of specter

Noun: specter
Singularspecter
Pluralspecters

Sample Sentences

  • A specter haunted the cemetery at the old Vasquez manor.
  • Nevertheleſſe, they which ſhould ſee thoſe Iſles thus to moove in this manner, not knowing before that the ſame were naturall: they would entertaine many and diverſe apprehenſions in their fantaſie, & would imagine that they ſawe a thing very ſtrange and prodigious, and ſuch as did very neere approach to the nature of ſome Specter [translating spectre] and viſion. [1605, Peter de Loier [i.e., Pierre Le Loyer], translated by [Zachary Jones], “The many things being meerely Naturall are taken by the Sight or Hearing being deceived, for Specters and things prodigious”, in A Treatise of Specters or Straunge Sights, Visions and Apparitions Appearing Sensibly vnto Men. […], London: […] Val[entine] S[immes] for Mathew Lownes, →OCLC, folio 62, verso:]
  • The specter of an election-vote recount is this year's political bogeyman.
  • A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies. [1848, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, translated by Samuel Moore, The Communist Manifesto:]
  • Already, the specter of higher interest rates was causing the housing market to seize up. [2022 September 27, Mark Landler, “Truss Takes a Bold Economic Gamble. Will It Sink Her Government?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 19 Dec 2022:]
  • Thailand's Constitutional Court on Wednesday dismissed Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin for appointing to his cabinet a former lawyer who served jail time, raising the spectre of more political upheaval and a reset of the governing alliance. [2024 August 14, “Thai court removes PM Srettha Thavisin from office over cabinet appointment”, in France 24, archived from the original on 01 Jul 2025:]
  • Instead of three co-equal branches acting as a check on each other, power has become increasingly concentrated over the years in the White House – a trend that is now being supercharged under Mr. Trump in ways that, to critics, raise the specter of authoritarianism. [2025 February 25, Linda Feldmann, “How Trump skirts checks and balances unlike any modern-day US president”, in The Christian Science Monitor, archived from the original on 27 Feb 2025:]
  • The large and handsome spectre-butterfly, Hestia durvillei; the pale-winged peacock butterfly, Drusilla catops; and the most brilliant and wonderful of the clear-winged moths, Cocytia durvillei, were especially interesting, as well, as several little "blues," equalling in brilliancy and beauty anything the butterfly world can produce. [1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume II, London: Macmillan and Co., page 199:]

Etymology

From Middle French spectre, from Latin spectrum (“appearance, apparition”). Doublet of spectrum. See: Latin Nouns 'spectrum'.