ghost

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle English gost, gast, from Old English gāst (“breath, soul, spirit, ghost, being”), from Proto-Germanic *gaistaz (“ghost, spirit”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰeizd-, *ǵʰizd- (“anger, agitation”), *ǵʰeysd-, *ǵʰisd- (“anger, agitation”). Cognate with Scots ghaist (“ghost”), West Frisian geast (“spirit”), Dutch geest (“spirit, mind, ghost”), German Geist (“spirit, mind, intellect”), Swedish gast (“ghost”), Sanskrit हेड (heḍa, “anger, hatred”).

Pronunciation

Noun

ghost (plural ghosts)

  1. (rare) The spirit; the soul of man.
    Then gives her grieved ghost thus to lament. — Spenser
  2. The disembodied soul; the soul or spirit of a deceased person; a spirit appearing after death; an apparition; a specter.
    The mighty ghosts of our great Harries rose. — Shakespeare.
    I thought that I had died in sleep/And was a blessed ghost. — Coleridge
    • 1992, Rudolf M. Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, page vii
      Hepaticology, outside the temperate parts of the Northern Hemisphere, still lies deep in the shadow cast by that ultimate "closet taxonomist," Franz Stephani—a ghost whose shadow falls over us all.
  3. Any faint shadowy semblance; an unsubstantial image; a phantom; a glimmering.
    not a ghost of a chance
    the ghost of an idea
    Each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. — Poe
  4. A false image formed in a telescope, camera, or other optical device by reflection from the surfaces of one or more lenses.
  5. An unwanted image similar to and overlapping or adjacent to the main one on a television screen, caused by the transmitted image being received both directly and via reflection.
  6. A ghostwriter.
  7. (Internet) An unresponsive user on IRC, resulting from the user's client disconnecting without notifying the server.
  8. (computing) an image of a file or hard disk.
  9. (theater) An understudy.
  10. (espionage) A covert (and deniable) agent.
  11. The faint image that remains after an attempt to remove graffiti.
    • 1992, Maurice J. Whitford, Getting Rid of Graffiti (page 45)
      Regardless of GRM used, graffiti ghosts persist. Protect cladding with surface coating or replace with graffiti resistant paint or laminate.

Synonyms

Derived terms

Terms derived from ghost

See also

Other terms of interest

Translations

soul — see soul
spirit appearing after death
faint shadowy semblance
false image in an optical device
false image on a television screen
ghostwriter — see ghostwriter
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Help:How to check translations.
Translations to be checked

Verb

ghost (third-person singular simple present ghosts, present participle ghosting, simple past and past participle ghosted)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To haunt; to appear to in the form of an apparition.
  2. (obsolete) To die; to expire.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Sir Philip Sidney to this entry?)
  3. (transitive, intransitive) To ghostwrite.
  4. (computing) to copy a file or hard drive image.
  5. (Internet, transitive) To forcibly disconnect an IRC user who is using one's reserved nickname.
  6. This word needs a definition. Please help out and add a definition, then remove the text {{rfdef}}.
    • 2011 September 24, David Ornstein, “Arsenal 3 - 0 Bolton”, BBC Sport:
      Arsenal came into the match under severe pressure and nerves were palpable early on as Pratley was brilliantly denied by Szczesny after ghosting in front of Kieran Gibbs

Anagrams

↑Jump back a section
Last modified on 19 May 2013, at 19:13