spectacle
Pluralspectacles
- 1An exciting or extraordinary scene, exhibition, or performance that draws people to watch it.
The opening ceremony was a spectacle of light, music, and acrobatics.
Tourists travel for miles to witness the spectacle of the migrating herds.
Similardisplay, show, extravaganza, sight, pageant
Note
Latin gave it the idea of watching: spectāculum, "a show," from spectō, "to see, behold." A spectacle is defined by its audience, and the thrill can be dark. Scott Tobias calls a Hunger Games bloodbath a "grim spectacle," and Shakespeare's Joan of Arc is paraded in the market-place "to be a public spectacle to all." That shaming display is the bridge to the embarrassing meaning.
- 2An embarrassing or unedifying scene or situation, especially one that attracts unwanted attention.
The argument in the lobby became a spectacle that everyone pretended not to watch.
He drank too much and made a spectacle of himself at the wedding.
Similarscene, exhibition, sideshow
Note
Most at home in a fixed phrase: to make a spectacle of yourself, or, a little more loosely, to make a spectacle out of yourself. The reflexive is the point, because the person who causes the scene is also the thing everyone watches. The "looked at" root behind the "show" meaning survives, but now the audience is judging rather than admiring.
- 3Attributive form of spectacles.
The museum displayed an antique spectacle case made of carved ivory.
The optician adjusted the spectacle frames until they sat evenly.
Note
Here the plural-only word for eyeglasses drops its -s to modify another noun. You wear a pair of spectacles, but you keep them in a spectacle case and fit spectacle frames. Peleg Parsley Bell writes of "leather spectacle frames" in 1858. The eyewear sense of spectacles is now dated, so these compounds tend to sound old-fashioned or belong to the optician's trade.
- 4
- 5A frame holding differently colored lenses on a railroad semaphore signal, through which a lamp shines at night, often forming part of the signal arm.
The signalman checked that the spectacle aligned correctly with the lamp behind it.
As the arm dropped, the spectacle moved a green lens in front of the light.
Note
Railroad signaling uses the word for the part that carries the message after dark. The lamp stays fixed, and as the signal arm moves, the spectacle swings a differently colored lens in front of it. The color of the light therefore tells engine crews the same thing the arm's position shows by day. In this technical sense the word is singular and names a single frame.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English spectacle, borrowed from Middle French spectacle, from Latin spectāculum ("a show, spectacle"). This came from spectō ("to see, behold"), a frequentative form of speciō ("to see").