SPECTRE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does spectre mean? 

• SPECTRE (noun)
  The noun SPECTRE has 2 senses:

1. a ghostly appearing figure

2. a mental representation of some haunting experience

  Familiarity information: SPECTRE used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SPECTRE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A ghostly appearing figure

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

apparition; fantasm; phantasm; phantasma; phantom; specter; spectre

Context example:

we were unprepared for the apparition that confronted us

Hypernyms ("spectre" is a kind of...):

disembodied spirit; spirit (any incorporeal supernatural being that can become visible (or audible) to human beings)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "spectre"):

Flying Dutchman (the captain of a phantom ship (the Flying Dutchman) who was condemned to sail against the wind until Judgment Day)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A mental representation of some haunting experience

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Synonyms:

ghost; shade; specter; spectre; spook; wraith

Context example:

it aroused specters from his past

Hypernyms ("spectre" is a kind of...):

apparition; fantasm; phantasm; phantasma; phantom; shadow (something existing in perception only)

 Context examples 

Of the foul German spectre—the Vampyre.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

“Do not ask me,” cried I, putting my hands before my eyes, for I thought I saw the dreaded spectre glide into the room; “he can tell. Oh, save me! Save me!”

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

With few new antibiotics in development, antibiotic resistance is widely considered a serious threat to the future of modern medicine, raising the spectre of untreatable infections.

(Widely-available antibiotics could be used in the treatment of ‘superbug’ MRSA, University of Cambridge)

I involuntarily shunned the thought of it, and yet the thought continually arose in my mind like a haunting spectre.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

I could not recover myself in some time, till the governor assured me, that I should receive no hurt: and observing my two companions to be under no concern, who had been often entertained in the same manner, I began to take courage, and related to his highness a short history of my several adventures; yet not without some hesitation, and frequently looking behind me to the place where I had seen those domestic spectres.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

If the thought that I may die and leave my darling, or that my darling may die and leave me, comes like a spectre, to distress my happiest hours, and is only to be drowned in— He did not supply the word; but pacing slowly to the place where he had sat, and mechanically going through the action of pouring wine from the empty decanter, set it down and paced back again.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

"Down superstition!" I commented, as that spectre rose up black by the black yew at the gate.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I walked about the isle like a restless spectre, separated from all it loved and miserable in the separation.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Though the cook had a cubby-hole of a state-room opening off from the cabin, in the cabin itself he had never dared to linger or to be seen, and he flitted to and fro, once or twice a day, a timid spectre.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

When I thought of the airy dreams of youth that are incapable of realization, I thought of the better state preceding manhood that I had outgrown; and then the contented days with Agnes, in the dear old house, arose before me, like spectres of the dead, that might have some renewal in another world, but never more could be reanimated here.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)