ghost

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[edit] English

[edit] Alternative forms

[edit] Etymology

From Middle English gost, gast, from Old English gāst (“breath, soul, spirit, ghost, life, mind, angel, demon, man, human being”), from Proto-Germanic *gaistaz (“ghost, spirit”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰeizd-, *ǵʰizd- (“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”).

[edit] Pronunciation

[edit] Noun

ghost (plural ghosts)

  1. (obsolete) 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. (paganism) A nature spirit, ancestor or house spirit (see brownie ) revered in Heathenry.
    Before all else, we speak to the land to the ghosts and spirits of this place known to many as pixies, fairies, brownies, or elfs. (Math Jones)
  8. (Internet) An unresponsive user on IRC, resulting from the user's client disconnecting without notifying the server.
  9. (computing) an image of a file or hard disk.

[edit] Synonyms

[edit] Derived terms

Terms derived from ghost

[edit] See also

Other terms of interest

[edit] Translations

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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

[edit] Verb

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

  1. (transitive) To haunt.
  2. (ambitransitive) To ghostwrite.
  3. (computing) to copy a file or hard drive image.
  4. 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

[edit] Anagrams

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