From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishthe spectre of somethingthe spectre of somethingFRIGHTENEDsomething that people are afraid of because it may affect them badly The recession is again raising the spectre of unemployment. → spectre
Examples from the Corpus
the spectre of something• The prospect of such telecoms competition raises the spectre of intervention by government or the courts.• It was only after the reasonable harvest of 1922 that the spectre of nation-wide starvation receded.• And the spectre of money laundering looms.• But the spectre of delivering a speech brown-nosing the teachers jammed her imagination.• For more than a decade, the spectre of the return of the hippy, of progressive rock, has haunted music-making.• Looming large over all these doubts is the spectre of costs.• The cultural move from an autonomous and independent sculpture back to the public sphere inevitably raises the spectre of popular culture. 