Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun An apparent word or false form found in manuscript or print, due to some blunder of the scribe, editor, or printer.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Many a ghost-word due to a seventeenth century misprint still gibbers at us from the mote ambitious dictionaries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
On Dictionaries 1969
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Sometimes, even — as in the case of syllabus — the ghost-word has acquired flesh and bones and become a respectable citizen of the world of words.
On Dictionaries 1969
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So also, "canoe" is a ghost-word, traced to a misreading of _scaphas_ as
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Sometimes, even — as in the case of syllabus — the ghost-word has acquired flesh and bones and become a respectable citizen of the world of words.
On Dictionaries 1924
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Many a ghost-word due to a seventeenth century misprint still gibbers at us from the mote ambitious dictionaries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
On Dictionaries 1924
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Alas and dammit, Chambers has dropped the last three words of its definition of ghost-word: "a word that has originated in the blunder of a scribe or printer -- common in dictionaries."
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