ghost

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“
It may certainly be that our ghost is a humbug, or, rather, that we have no such thing as a ghost at all.

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Definitions (53)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (19)

  1. noun The spirit of a dead person, especially one believed to appear in bodily likeness to living persons or to haunt former habitats.
  2. noun The center of spiritual life; the soul.
  3. noun A demon or spirit.
16 more from this dictionary »

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (24)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (3)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (7)

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Examples (50)

  • I miss her, the one who died, and her ghost is my responsibility, a relationship based on who we lost, while Maggie is a friend, a relationship based on what we found. —  F ;SF - vol 105 issue 02 - August 2003
  • If done correctly the ghost should be at the other side.
  • This morning the entire family huddled around the DVD player to watch an episode where a ghost is acting out a 50-year old murder. —  The ADD Blog at Comic Book Galaxy
  • For the hands of the ghost were the bony structures of a human skeleton, and its head was an empty skull That's our lab skeleton, I'll bet!" —  The Girl Scouts' Good Turn
  • And then the voice told Eliphalet that the other ghost was a woman What?" —  Tales of Fantasy and Fact
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Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

demon ·  creature ·  shadow ·  dream ·  god ·  devil ·  spirit ·  one ·  angel ·  figure ·  mystery ·  companion

Used in the same contextWord Family

ghost:   ghosts ·  ghosted
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English gost, from Old English gāst, breath, spirit.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. The h is a modern and unnecessary insertion; prop, gost, from Middle English gost, goost, earlier gast, from Anglo-Saxon gāst, breath, spirit, a spirit, = Old Saxon gēst = OFries. gast, iest = Dutch geest = Middle Low German geist, Low German geest = Old High German Middle High German G. geist, spirit, a spirit, genius, = Old Danish gast, spirit, specter, Danish geist (prob. from G.), a ghost, spirit, = Swedish gast, evil spirit, ghost, satyr; not in Icelandic nor in Gothic (Moesogothic) (Goth, ahma, spirit). The sense of ‘apparition, specter,’ is later than that of ‘breath, spirit,’ and makes more improbable the connection, usually asserted (through ‘a terrifying apparition’), with ghastly, gastly, gast, terrify, Goth, us-gaisjan, terrify: see gast. The origin remains uncertain.
  2. from ghost, n.
 

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/goʊst/
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