haunt

Pronunciation

• IPA: /hɔːnt/ (UK); /hɔnt/ (US)^[1]

Etymology

inherited from Middle English haunten,^[2][3][4][1] borrowed from Old French hanter (“to frequent, visit regularly”),^{[2][5][3][6][4][1]} of uncertain origin.^[4] It is probably from Old Norse heimta (“to bring home”),^{[6][4][5][3][1]} from the Germanic word for “home”;^[6][4][1] Wiktionary allows Old English hāmettan “to bring home” as a source too.^[1] The word is therefore a distant relative of home.^[6][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

“To practise habitually, busy oneself with”, in the early 13th century.^[4][7][6] In Middle English one could haunte scole, “attend school”.^[4]

Semantic evolution

From doing something often, the verb came to mean going somewhere often, “to frequent a place” (c. 1300),^[4][7][6] and of memories and feelings, to keep returning to the mind (1576).^[7] The ghostly sense, of a spirit returning to the house where it had lived, first appears in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1590).^[4][7] Barnhart says the French verb had first referred to a spirit returning home,^[6] while Etymonline suggests the ghostly use may be very old but was lost and later developed again.^[4] The noun haunt “ghost” is from 1843, originally in American dialect.^[4][7]

Timeline

• c. 1230 – “to practise habitually”.^[7][4]
• c. 1290 – “to frequent a place”.^[7]
• c. 1330 – noun, “a place often visited”.^[7][4]
• 1576 – of memories and cares, “to keep returning”.^[7]
• 1590 – of ghosts, in Shakespeare.^[4][7]
• 1843 – noun, “ghost”.^[4][7]

Modern meaning

Verb

1. To inhabit or visit a place, or appear to a person, as a ghost.
2. To visit a place often.
3. To keep returning to the mind of; to trouble or obsess.

Noun

1. A place someone visits often.
2. (dialect) A ghost.

Word family

• haunter
• hauntingly

Related words

• home
• hamlet

References

1. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. [1] [2] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
3. [1] [2] [3] [4] Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1999), 2nd ed., New York: Random House
4. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. [1] [2] Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
7. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press