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spectrum

Pronunciation: [ˈspɛk.trũː]

“spectrum” is a Latin word. Its 3 meanings in English:

noun

  1. appearance, image
  2. apparition, specter, phantom
  3. spectrum (band of light arranged in order by wavelength)

Etymology

From spec(iō) (“look at, behold”) + -trum (making it a doublet of speculum). The only attestation in Classical antiquity is in a pair of letters between Cicero and Cassius Longinus which imply that the Epicurean Catius (fl. c. 50s–40s BC) used spectrum as a translation of the Greek philosophical term εἴδωλον (eídōlon, “image”). It may therefore have been coined by Catius as a neologism, although…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.