spectrum
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈspɛktɹəm/
rhymes: -ɛktɹəm
Forms: form: spectra
form: spectrums
Etymology: From Latin spectrum (“appearance, image, apparition”), from speciō (“look at, view”). Doublet of specter. See also scope.
Senses: examples: text: Near-synonyms: sliding scale, continuum
text: As Mr. Obama prepared to take the oath, his approval rating touched a remarkable 70 percent in some polling — a reflection of good will across the political spectrum.
ref: 2012 November 7, Matt Bai, “Winning a Second Term, Obama Will Confront Familiar Headwinds”, in New York Times:
glosses: A range; a continuous, infinite, one-dimensional set, possibly bounded by extremes.
examples: text: Current 3G technologies can send roughly 1 bit of data - a one or a zero - per second over each 1 Hz of spectrum that the operator owns.
ref: 2010 October 30, Jim Giles, “Jammed!”, in New Scientist:
glosses: Specifically, a range of colours representing light (electromagnetic radiation) of contiguous frequencies; hence electromagnetic spectrum, visible spectrum, ultraviolet spectrum, etc.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 2022, Percival Everett, Dr. No, Influx Press (2023), page 110:
topics: education
human-sciences
psychology
sciences
glosses: The autism spectrum.
raw_tags: with the
topics: chemistry
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
glosses: The pattern of absorption or emission of radiation produced by a substance when subjected to energy (radiation, heat, electricity, etc.).
topics: linear-algebra
mathematics
sciences
synonyms: eigenspectrum
glosses: The set of eigenvalues of a matrix.
topics: mathematics
sciences
qualifier: functional analysis
glosses: Of a bounded linear operator A, the set of scalar values λ such that the operator A—λI, where I denotes the identity operator, does not have a bounded inverse; intended as a generalisation of the linear algebra sense.
topics: algebraic-geometry
geometry
mathematics
sciences
hypernyms: scheme
hyponyms: Stone space
qualifier: commutative algebra
glosses: An abstract object in mathematics created from a commutative ring R and denoted operatorname Spec(R) or operatorname SpecR and said to be the spectrum of R; useful in the study of such rings for providing a geometric object which encodes many of the properties R, and in modern geometry for generalizing the notion of an algebraic variety to that of an affine scheme. Formally, the set of all prime ideals R equipped with the Zariski topology and augmented with a sheaf of rings called the structure sheaf, generated by the B-sheaf on the distinguished open sets D_f which assigns the localization of R at f to each set D_f, regarded as a ring of functions on D_f. See Spectrum of a ring on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
glosses: Specter, apparition.
glosses: The image of something seen that persists after the eyes are closed.
Derived terms: absorption spectrum
autism spectrum
autism spectrum disorder
autistic spectrum
autistic spectrum disorder
band spectrum
Bloch spectrum
broad-spectrum
broad-spectrum antibiotic
cepstrum
Eilenberg-MacLane spectrum
emission spectrum
fetal alcohol spectrum disorder
first-order spectrum
full-spectrum superiority
full spectrum superiority
hydrogen spectrum
light spectrum
line spectrum
mass spectrum
narrow-spectrum
nuclear spectrum
on the spectrum
optical spectrum
political spectrum
schizophrenia spectrum
spectro-
spectrum analyser
spectrum analyzer
spectrum disorder
spread spectrum communication
X-ray spectrum
Related terms: spectral