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SPECTACLE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A blunder that makes you look ridiculous; used in the phrase 'make a spectacle of' yourself
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("spectacle" is a kind of...):
bloomer; blooper; blunder; boner; boo-boo; botch; bungle; flub; foul-up; fuckup; pratfall (an embarrassing mistake)
Sense 2
Meaning:
An elaborate and remarkable display on a lavish scale
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
Hypernyms ("spectacle" is a kind of...):
display; presentation (a visual representation of something)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "spectacle"):
bullfight; corrida (a Spanish or Portuguese or Latin American spectacle; a matador baits and (usually) kills a bull in an arena before many spectators)
naumachia; naumachy (a naval spectacle; a mock sea battle put on by the ancient Romans)
Derivation:
spectacular (characteristic of spectacles or drama)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Something or someone seen (especially a notable or unusual sight)
Example:
the tragic spectacle of cripples trying to escape
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("spectacle" is a kind of...):
sight (anything that is seen)
Derivation:
spectacular (having a quality that thrusts itself into attention)
Context examples:
He came out of the tangle a spectacle of malignancy, ears flattened back, lips writhing, nose wrinkling, his teeth clipping together as the fangs barely missed the hound's soft throat.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
I kept, among other little necessaries, a pair of spectacles in a private pocket, which, as I observed before, had escaped the emperor’s searchers.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
He was indeed a deplorable spectacle.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
A voice, Here he is, sir! and an inoffensive little person in spectacles, struggling violently, was held up among a group of students.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
It was not a heartening spectacle.
(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)
He was a tall man, full-bearded, with spectacles, one glass of which had been knocked out.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be—a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others and intolerable to myself.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
Such a spectacle may brutalize those who are brutal, but I say that there is a spiritual side to it also, and that the sight of the utmost human limit of endurance and courage is one which bears a lesson of its own.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
In the evening, when the snowflakes fell, the mother said: Go, Snow-white, and bolt the door, and then they sat round the hearth, and the mother took her spectacles and read aloud out of a large book, and the two girls listened as they sat and spun.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
And though he wasn’t the first or only person to observe this stellar spectacle, the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe wrote a book about his extensive observations of the event, gaining the honor of it being named after him.
(Chandra Movie Captures Expanding Debris from a Stellar Explosion, NASA)
