ghost

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ɡəʊst/ (UK); /ɡoʊst/ (US)^[1]

Etymology

inherited from Middle English gost, inherited from Old English gāst (“breath, spirit, soul”).^[2][3][4][1] Cognate with Old Saxon gēst, Dutch geest and German Geist.^[4][2] Etymonline suggests a Proto-Indo-European root *gheis- used in words for excitement, amazement or fear, which also gave Gothic usgaisjan “to frighten”.^[2]

The silent h first appears in print in William Caxton's Royal Book (1484), in the phrase “Holy Ghoost”, probably under the influence of Flemish gheest.^[1] Barnhart dates the spelling ghost to about 1425 and also points to Middle Dutch gheest.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

In Old English the word meant the soul or spirit, the principle of life in a person,^[5] and in Christian writing it translated Latin spiritus, a use that survives in Holy Ghost.^[2][5] The phrase give up the ghost “to die” keeps the old sense of “life, breath”.^[5][6]

Semantic evolution

The sense “spirit of a dead person”, especially one that wanders among or haunts the living, is recorded from the late 14th century,^[2] and Etymonline notes that this probably brings the word back toward its prehistoric meaning of a supernatural being.^[2] From the 17th century ghost also meant a faint trace or shadow of something, as in the ghost of a chance (1613).^[4] By the 1880s it was used for a person who secretly does work credited to someone else,^[2][4] the source of the verb ghost “to ghostwrite” (1922).^[2][5][4] In the 2010s the verb gained a new prominence in the sense “to cut off all contact with someone without explanation”.^[1]

Timeline

• before 900 – Old English gāst, “soul, spirit”.^[5][4]
• late 14th century – “spirit of a dead person”.^[2]
• 1484 – the spelling with gh- in print, in Caxton.^[1]
• 1606 – verb, “to haunt as an apparition”.^[5][6]
• 1613 – “faint trace, shadow”.^[4]
• 1884 – “one who secretly does work for another”.^[2]
• 1922 – verb, “to ghostwrite”.^[2][5][4]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. The spirit of a dead person, thought to appear to the living or to haunt a place.
2. A faint trace or the slightest amount of something.
3. A false secondary image on a screen or in a photograph.
4. A ghostwriter.
5. (archaic) The soul, the principle of life.

Verb

1. To haunt.
2. To ghostwrite.
3. To move silently, like a ghost.
4. To end contact with someone abruptly and without explanation.

Word family

• ghosty
• ghostlike
• ghostily
• ghosting

Related words

• spirit
• geist
• aghast
• ghastly
• poltergeist
• phantom
• wraith

Usage notes

Random House distinguishes ghost, the spirit of a dead person that shows itself to the living, from specter, an apparition of more unearthly or terrifying appearance, and spirit, which can also mean any supernatural being, good or evil.^[7]

References

1. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. [1] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
4. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
5. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. [1] [2] Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. [1] Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1999), 2nd ed., New York: Random House