Word of the Day:
spectrum
What It Means
A range; a continuous, infinite, one-dimensional set, possibly bounded by extremes.
Specifically, a range of colours representing light (electromagnetic radiation) of contiguous frequencies; hence electromagnetic spectrum, visible spectrum, ultraviolet spectrum, etc.
The autism spectrum.
Near-synonyms: sliding scale, continuum
Spectrum in Context
“He punctuated his words with a look into my eyes that might have been read as threatening or menacing by anyone who was not on the spectrum. But I am on the spectrum, and so I stared back at him.”
Did You Know?
From Latin spectrum (“appearance, image, apparition”), from speciō (“look at, view”). Doublet of specter. See also scope.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: spectrum (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “spectrum.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spectrum. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.