Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A ghost that manifests itself by noises, rappings, and the creation of disorder.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A ghost or spirit that indicates its presence by the sound of moving objects, knocks, and similar noises.
Wiktionary
- n. An unseen ghost which makes noises and causes disruption, especially by causing physical objects to move or fly about.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a ghost that announces its presence with rapping and the creation of disorder
Etymologies
- From German Polter ("rumble") + Geist ("spirit"). (Wiktionary)
- German : poltern, to make noises (from Middle High German boldern) + Geist, ghost (from Middle High German, from Old High German). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The term poltergeist is German for “noisy spirit.””
“I mean, it didnâ⠂ ¬â „ ¢t catch the zeitgeist of the country like E.T. but of course these are 2 completely different kinds of movies. poltergeist is a horror film which at the time was projecting Hollywoodâ⠂ ¬â „ ¢s fears of the TV or namely the influx of a little thing called home video ..”
“Lastly, I think poltergeist is not all that dated.”
“The good news: the world's most trivial poltergeist is no longer haunting our clock.”
“It's a sort of evil spirit that plays tricks," explained Tuppence who in reality knew very little of the subject, and was not even sure that she had got the word poltergeist right.”
““Being asked, further, whether she had ever considered that what she called the poltergeist was more probably some mischievous person who was taking advantage of the fact that the house had a ghostly reputation among the villagers, she replied that she ‘had thought of it, of course,’ and added: ‘We always investigated each house we took of this kind to make sure nobody was playing about.”
“When the family returns to the kid’s room, the young Carol Anne, who served almost as a conduit to the poltergeist, is nowhere to be found.”
TEN of TERROR #1: Poltergeist « Giant Killer Squid - Film, Comics, News, Reviews and more
“Edward Morris 11:57 pm: My poltergeist was a junkie, and a great jazz musician.”
“Swelk waggled her sensor stalks in amused confusion ... the thing Kyle called a poltergeist baffled her translation program.”
“There isn't a single thing about any of us that hasn't been documented: the teleportation of the Yogi, the telekinetics of some gamblers, the idiot savant mathematicians, and most of all, the so-called poltergeist, the moving about of household goods through the instrumentation of a young girl.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘poltergeist’.
-
set phasers to...
you name the setting
I've tuned mine to be gentler and kinder
following suit is not mandatory but would be appreciatedcoddle, confuse, flummox, tap, furrow, instigate, invigorate, punnify, logical, must... act... be..., bowdlerise, laughing gas and 435 more...
-
®emovies
Movies or TV shows where the titles are also common words, generally one-word titles.
lost, alien, bug, elephant, siege, gladiator, flock, captivity, piano, roots, freaks, moonstruck and 269 more...
-
MYTH - spooky creatures
takes the form of a, demon, teeth of iron, unicorn, forest spirit, magical eel, savage humanoid, one-horned animal, creature, headless humanoid, disease-bringing ..., rainbow-feathered... and 607 more...
-
Words that are also movies
Unabashedly stolen from a comment made by courier12.
vertigo, serendipity, casablanca, psycho, jaws, fantasia, stagecoach, network, rocky, giant, platoon, unforgiven and 285 more...
-
Mythical Beings
mermaid, manticore, fairy, brownie, dwarf, elf, leprechaun, selkie, gremlin, puck, pixie, genie and 97 more...
-
ghost
This is Ghost List 2 ( the kind that go 'boo!' ) :P
( open list )
more:
http://www.wordnik.com/lists/macabrephantom, spectral, specter, spectre, spooky, poltergeist, haunt, spirit, banshee, cryptic, shadow, phantasm and 311 more...
-
permanent foreign residents in English
Foreign words and phrases that are perfectly acceptable to use in formal English writing, but still maintain the aura of foreignness. They do not enjoy full citizenship, but remain "alien residents...
prima facie, a priori, a posteriori, avant la lettre, corpus delicti, l'esprit de l'esc..., sans-culotte, memento mori, gesamtkunstwerk, amour propre, guru, deja vu and 25 more...
-
Phantasmas
Ouroboros, chimera, incubus, cerberus, hippogriff, leviathan, centaur, Jabberwock, numen, snark, sphinx, hippocamp and 26 more...
-
gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1901 more...
-
Twitter favourites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favourite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
thunderfuck, incredible, merp, sara, flopparoo, smother, fugly, buer, plum, canny, nefelibata, cuntbucket and 1972 more... -
BuffaloBen's Words
sycamore, wipfel, rohlingsspindel, gorgeous, flamboyance, anschmiegen, pengpeng, zuckerhut, revolver, troubleshooter, breeze, dandy and 228 more...
-
Words I Know
List of most of the words I've learned
garner, abase, abate, abdicate, abduct, aberration, abet, abhor, abide, abject, abjure, abnegation and 1046 more...
-
SoSheShall's list
slurp, coeur, slurple, glop, perp, fluarxx, ropechno, herrherr, burrduhherrherr, sloppy, cheezie balls, eccentric and 634 more...
-
The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
-
Wordplay
reticent, slammerkin, moonstruck, zephyr, gallivant, hullabaloo, pandemonium, equestrian, wallflower, martyr, threadbare, treacherous and 180 more...
-
words found to be generally pleasing
alabaster, mahogany, camphor, coalesce, spire, portmanteau, gadabout, palaver, dolor, dour, dun, luminesce and 610 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for poltergeist.
Comments
No comments yet...
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.