spectacle

What it means

1. countableAn exciting or extraordinary scene, exhibition, performance etc.

   The horse race was a thrilling spectacle.

   3 more examples

   But scarcely was it set upon the table when the whole was carried off and plundered by the people who came to see the spectacle of the entertainment

   1876, Robert Southey, edited by John Wood Warter, Choice passages, Reaves and Turner, page 555

   VVith ſcoffes and ſcornes, and contumelious taunts, / In open Market-place produc't they me, / To be a publique ſpectacle to all: / Here, ſayd they, is the Terror of the French, / The Scar-Crovv that affrights our Children ſo.

   1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene vi], page 100, column 1

   22 March 2012, Scott Tobias, AV Club The Hunger Gameshttps://web.archive.org/web/20120324175255/http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-hunger-games,71293/ In movie terms, it suggests Paul Verhoeven in Robocop/Starship Troopers mode, an R-rated bloodbath where the grim spectacle of children murdering each other on television is bread-and-circuses for the age of reality TV, enforced by a totalitarian regime to keep the masses at bay.

   Synonyms: pageant, show

2. uncountableDrama and excitement in a display, product, performance, exhibition, etc.

   I enjoyed her presentation, but it needs more spectacle.

3. countableAn embarrassing or unedifying scene or situation.

   He made a spectacle out of himself.

In a sentence

The horse race was a thrilling spectacle.

Where it comes from

1. Latinspectāculum“a show, spectacle”
2. Middle Frenchspectacle
3. Middle Englishspectacle
4. Englishspectacle

From Middle English spectacle, from Middle French spectacle, from Latin spectāculum (“a show, spectacle”), from spectō (“to see, behold”), frequentative of speciō (“to see”). See species. Doublet of spectaculum.