Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A word that has come into a dictionary, grammar, or other scholarly work as a result of a misreading or misinterpretation, as by mistaking a typographical error for an actual word.
Wiktionary
- n. A fictitious or erroneous word, originally meaningless, that has been published in a dictionary or similarly authoritative reference book, or has been listed as genuine, generally as the result of misinterpretation or a typographical error.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a word form that has entered the language through the perpetuation of an error
Examples
Sorry, no example sentences found.
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘ghost word’.
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nouns
enfleurage, fautor, mafia, haslet, chopine, sea-gate, cantillation, formicary, go-devil, Gongorism, mamzer, mazarine and 147 more...
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word phrases
to have a look how word is used
and the plurala word, a word or two, a couple of words, word-artist, word base, word-based, word-bate, word battle, word-bearer, word-beat, word-blind, word blindness and 299 more...
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Linguistic Terms
Words that (mostly) only linguists know.
arpabet, protologism, diacritic, macron, macaronic, capitonym, grapheme, boustrophedon, allograph, analphabetic, idiomatic, portmanteau and 40 more...
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WF - nonce words and hapax legomena
Nonce words are one-time word formations, recorded or non-recorded (which may occur several times within a literary work or utterance). A hapax legomenon is a recorded one-time word formation withi...
wug, blicket, dax, toma, pimwit, zav, speff, tulver, gazzer, fem, fendle, tupa and 32 more...
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The Collection
A somewhat discriminatory list of words and phrases collected for their euphonic or arcane appeal, interesting etymology, or concise definition of an otherwise unnamed phenomenon or concept.
ziggurat, neophilia, sucker punch, soporific, epoch, tundra, fiat, idiotproof, miscellany, metaphysics, cryptozoology, dysphoria and 850 more...
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Words
Just another sorting device.
oneupsmanship, surpassing, oak gall, transformational, carriage return, riddle me this, pilling, logger, steno, horehound drops, reft, gammaglobulin and 109 more...
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February words
ghost word
tacitly
acquiescentsciamachy, lectrice, naufragous, bully pulpit, squib kick, brockage, derogate, puerile, verdant, quixotic, rickroll, grimoire and 22 more...
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Meta
Because in this crazy place, technical feedback on site bugs goes on the page for the word 'bugs'. See also Meta Squared, plethora's list of meta lists.
bugs, features, mobile, wordie, wordnet, madeupical, tagging, merch, weirdnet, tag, meta, search and 83 more...
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Ghost Words
ghost story, ghost town, ghostwrite, give up the ghost, ghost in the machine, ghost of a chance, lay that ghost to..., ghosting, white as a ghost, ghost argument, holy ghost, ghost ride the whip and 43 more...
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extrafavorite
really good words
homunculus, mustachio, munge, simpleton, impugn, rollicking, macaronic, futz, rhinocerotic, dingle, specious, oscitancy and 35 more...
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Dictionary Terms
The interesting ones. :)
polyglossary, e-dictionary, calepine, kosha, etymologicon, idioticon, onomasticon, wordbook, glossary, thesaurus, synonymicon, fictionary and 17 more...
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Linguistic Terms
eye dialect, pugnacious, portmanteau, sesquipedalian, vocative, ghost word, pyrrhic, subjunctive, surd
Tweets
Looking for tweets for ghost word.
swordnik E.g. "gofish" misread for "goofish" (medial S error?)
See here for more of Skeat's original ghost words: http://books.google.com/books?id=ZqQLqhkC8gkC&pg=PA180&lpg=PA180&dq=skeat+%22ghost+words%22&source=bl&ots=3zlYg0Qtqg&sig=mNkw_oKwfVIqJ9Xx25hFtI9zyQ4&hl=en&ei=c3gkTq6tCOrmiALOhfnLAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=skeat%20%22ghost%20words%22&f=false Jul 18, 2011
chained_bear A word that exists in Wordie but appears on 0 lists. May or may not have comments. See also zombie, casper, and conversation on features. Nov 22, 2007