A dialectal or archaic variant of 'aspect,' or in some contexts, a type of examination or inspection.
From Latin aspectus (a looking at, regard), which comes from aspicere (to look at). The form 'espec' appears in Middle English and early modern texts as a variant of 'aspect.'
Language is full of variant spellings that seem bizarre until you realize they reflect different pronunciations and regional dialects—'espec' is a ghost of how English sounded centuries ago!
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