specˈtrology rare.
[f. spectro- (in senses 1 and 3 of spectrum) + -logy.]
1. The science or study of spectres.
| 1820 W. Irving Sketch Bk. (1821) II. 196 The gloom of religious abstraction, and the wildness of their situation,..had filled their imaginations with the frightful chimeras of witchcraft and spectrology. 1827 Hone Table Bk. I. 710 Spectrology. A Remarkable Narrative. |
2. The scientific study of spectra.
| 1862 Amer. Jrnl. Sci. May 440 The attention of the French scientific world is wholly fixed on spectrology, for thus do they designate the experiment with the spectroscope of Bunsen and Kirchhof. [Hence in Webster (1864), etc.] 1969 James & Sternberg Design of Optical Spectrometers p. x, Spectroscopy (or spectrology, to introduce here a word coined by Fellgett) belongs to this branch of physics. |