speculum

Learned borrowing from Latin speculum.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈspɛk.jʊ.ləm/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• (UK, General American) IPA^(key): /ˈspɛk.jə.ləm/

speculum (plural specula or speculums)

1. (medicine) A medical instrument used during an examination to dilate an orifice.
3. A mirror, especially one used in a telescope.
4. (ornithology) A bright, lustrous patch of colour found on the wings of ducks and some other birds, usually situated on the distal portions of the secondary quills, and much more brilliant in the adult male than in the female.

   Synonyms: mirror, (archaic) beauty spot

5. A lookout place.

• speculum metal

• speculum literature

• muscle up, muscle-up

• speclum (Late Latin, proscribed)

By surface analysis, speciō (“look at”) +‎ -ulum (instrument suffix). Possibly from pre-Latin *spektlom, with the ending derived from the Proto-Indo-European instrument noun suffix *-tlom^[1] (see -culum). Alternatively from pre-Latin *spekelom or *spekolom, with the neuter form of the agent noun suffix -ulus.^[2] Compare spectrum.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈspɛ.kʊ.ɫũː]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈspɛː.ku.lum]

speculum n (genitive speculī); second declension

1. mirror, looking-glass

Second-declension noun (neuter).

• “speculum”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “speculum”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• "speculum", in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• “speculum”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “speculum”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “speculum”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin

speculum n (plural speculumuri)

1. alternative form of specul