[2] Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical dry shrubland and swamps.

The spectacled tyrant was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae.

[3][4] Gmelin based his description on "Le clignot ou traquet à lunette" that had been described in 1778 by the French polymath the Comte de Buffon in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux.

[5] The spectacled tyrant is now the only species placed in the genus Hymenops that was introduced in 1828 by the French naturalist René Lesson.

The specific epithet perspicillatus is Modern Latin meaning "spectacled".