Adjacent Words

Ghost definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

GHOST, n. [See Ghastly.]
1. Spirit; the soul of man.
In this sense seldom used. But hence,
2. The soul of a deceased person; the soul or spirit separate from the body; an apparition.
The mighty ghosts of our great Harrys rose.
To give up the ghost, is to die; to yield up the breath or spirit; to expire.
The Holy Ghost, is the third person in the adorable Trinity.
GHOST, v.i. To die; to expire.
GHOST, v.t. To haunt with an apparition.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: a mental representation of some haunting experience; "he looked like he had seen a ghost"; "it aroused specters from his past" [syn: ghost, shade, spook, wraith, specter, spectre]
2: a writer who gives the credit of authorship to someone else [syn: ghostwriter, ghost]
3: the visible disembodied soul of a dead person
4: a suggestion of some quality; "there was a touch of sarcasm in his tone"; "he detected a ghost of a smile on her face" [syn: touch, trace, ghost] v
1: move like a ghost; "The masked men ghosted across the moonlit yard"
2: haunt like a ghost; pursue; "Fear of illness haunts her" [syn: haunt, obsess, ghost]
3: write for someone else; "How many books have you ghostwritten so far?" [syn: ghost, ghostwrite]

Merriam Webster's

I. noun Etymology: Middle English gost, gast, from Old English g?st; akin to Old High German geist spirit, Sanskrit he?a anger Date: before 12th century 1. the seat of life or intelligence ; soul <give up the ghost> 2. a disembodied soul; especially the soul of a dead person believed to be an inhabitant of the unseen world or to appear to the living in bodily likeness 3. spirit, demon 4. a. a faint shadowy trace <a ghost of a smile> b. the least bit <not a ghost of a chance> 5. a false image in a photographic negative or on a television screen caused especially by reflection 6. one who ghostwrites 7. a red blood cell that has lost its hemoglobin • ghostlike adjective • ghosty adjective II. verb Date: 1606 transitive verb 1. to haunt like a ghost 2. ghostwrite intransitive verb 1. a. to move silently like a ghost b. to sail quietly in light winds 2. ghostwrite

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. & v. --n. 1 the supposed apparition of a dead person or animal; a disembodied spirit. 2 a shadow or mere semblance (not a ghost of a chance). 3 an emaciated or pale person. 4 a secondary or duplicated image produced by defective television reception or by a telescope. 5 archaic a spirit or soul. --v. 1 intr. (often foll. by for) act as ghost-writer. 2 tr. act as ghost-writer of (a work). Phrases and idioms: ghost town a deserted town with few or no remaining inhabitants. ghost-write v.tr. & intr. act as ghost-writer (of). ghost-writer a person who writes on behalf of the credited author of a work. Derivatives: ghostlike adj. Etymology: OE gast f. WG: gh- occurs first in Caxton, prob. infl. by Flem. gheest

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Ghost Ghost, n. [OE. gast, gost, soul, spirit, AS. g[=a]st breath, spirit, soul; akin to OS. g?st spirit, soul, D. geest, G. geist, and prob. to E. gaze, ghastly.] 1. The spirit; the soul of man. [Obs.] 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 Harrys rose. --Shak. I thought that I had died in sleep, And was a blessed ghost. --Coleridge. 3. Any faint shadowy semblance; an unsubstantial image; a phantom; a glimmering; as, 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 by reflection from the surfaces of one or more lenses. Ghost moth (Zo["o]l.), a large European moth (Hepialus humuli); so called from the white color of the male, and the peculiar hovering flight; -- called also great swift. Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit; the Paraclete; the Comforter; (Theol.) the third person in the Trinity. To give up or yield up the ghost, to die; to expire. And he gave up the ghost full softly. --Chaucer. Jacob . . . yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people. --Gen. xlix. 33.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Ghost Ghost, v. i. To die; to expire. [Obs.] --Sir P. Sidney.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Ghost Ghost, v. t. To appear to or haunt in the form of an apparition. [Obs.] --Shak.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(ghosts, ghosting, ghosted) 1. A ghost is the spirit of a dead person that someone believes they can see or feel. ...the ghost of Marie Antoinette... The village is haunted by the ghosts of the dead children. N-COUNT: oft N of n 2. The ghost of something, especially of something bad that has happened, is the memory of it. ...the ghost of anti-Americanism. N-COUNT: N of n 3. If there is a ghost of something, that thing is so faint or weak that it hardly exists. He gave the ghost of a smile... The sun was warm and there was just a ghost of a breeze from the north-west. N-SING: N of n 4. If a book or other piece of writing is ghosted, it is written by a writer for another person, for example a politician or sportsman, who then publishes it as his or her own work. I published his autobiography, which was very competently ghosted by a woman journalist from the Daily Mail... I ghosted his weekly rugby column for the Telegraph. = ghost-write VERB: be V-ed, V n 5. If someone does not stand or does not have a ghost of a chance of doing something, they have very little chance of succeeding in it. (INFORMAL) He doesn't stand a ghost of a chance of selling the house. PHRASE: v PHR, with neg

Easton's Bible Dictionary

an old Saxon word equivalent to soul or spirit. It is the translation of the Hebrew _nephesh_ and the Greek _pneuma_, both meaning "breath," "life," "spirit," the "living principle" (Job 11:20; Jer. 15:9; Matt. 27:50; John 19:30). The expression "to give up the ghost" means to die (Lam. 1:19; Gen. 25:17; 35:29; 49:33; Job 3:11). (See HOLY GHOST.)

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

gost (nephesh; pneuma) : "Ghost," the middle-English word for "breath," "spirit," appears in the King James Version as the translation of nephesh ("breath," "the breath of life," animal soul or spirit, the vital principle, hence, "life"), in two places of the Old Testament, namely, Job 11:20, "the giving up of the ghost" (so the Revised Version (British and American)), and Jer 15:9, "She hath given up the ghost"; gawa`, "to gasp out, "expire" (die), is also several times so translated (Ge 25:8,17; 35:29; 49:33; Job 3:11; 10:18; 13:19; 14:10; La 1:19). In Apocrypha (Tobit 14:11) psuche is translated in the same way as nephesh in the Old Testament, and in 2 Macc 3:31, en eschate pnoe is rendered "give up the ghost," the Revised Version (British and American) "quite at the last gasp."

In the New Testament "to give up the ghost" is the translation of ekpneo, "to breathe out" (Mr 15:37,39; Lu 23:46; so the Revised Version (British and American)); of ekpsucho, "to breathe out," "expire" (Ac 5:5,10; 12:23); in Mt 27:50, apheken to pneuma, and in Joh 19:30, paredoken to pneuma, are rendered respectively, "yielded" and "gave up the ghost," the Revised Version (British and American) "yielded up his spirit," "gave up his spirit."

"The Holy Ghost" is also frequent in the King James Version; in the American Standard Revised Version it is invariably changed to "Holy Spirit," in the English Revised Version sometimes only, chiefly in the Gospels.

See HOLY SPIRIT; SPIRIT.

W. L. Walker

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. 1. Spirit, soul. 2. Apparition, spectre, sprite, phantom, shade, departed spirit.

Moby Thesaurus

Doppelganger, Dracula, Frankenstein, Masan, Wolf-man, act for, advertising writer, agent, alternate, alternative, analogy, annalist, apparition, appearance, art critic, astral, astral spirit, author, authoress, backup, banshee, belletrist, bibliographer, black spot, bloom, blooping, bogey, bogeyman, boggart, bugaboo, bugbear, change, change places with, changeling, coauthor, collaborate, collaborator, columnist, comparison, compiler, compose, composer, control, copy, copywriter, counterfeit, creative writer, critic, crowd out, cut out, dance critic, dash off, definition, demon, departed spirit, deputy, devil, diarist, disembodied spirit, displace, double, double for, drama critic, dramatist, drift, dummy, duppy, dybbuk, editorialize, eidolon, encyclopedist, equal, equivalent, ersatz, essayist, exchange, fake, fee-faw-fum, fill in for, fill-in, flare, float, foot, form, formulate, free lance, free-lance, free-lance writer, frightener, fringe area, ghostwrite, ghostwriter, ghoul, glide, glimmer, granulation, grateful dead, grid, guide, hallucination, hant, hard shadow, haunt, hint, hobgoblin, holy terror, horror, humorist, idolum, illusion, image, imitation, immateriality, incorporeal, incorporeal being, incorporeity, incubus, indite, inditer, knock off, knock out, larva, lemures, literary artist, literary craftsman, literary critic, literary man, litterateur, locum tenens, logographer, magazine writer, makeshift, man of letters, manes, materialization, metaphor, metonymy, monographer, monster, multiple image, music critic, newspaperman, next best thing, nightmare, noise, novelettist, novelist, novelize, ogre, ogress, oni, pamphleteer, penwoman, personnel, phantasm, phantasma, phantom, phony, picture, picture noise, picture shifts, pinch hitter, pinch-hit, plow the deep, poet, poltergeist, prepare, presence, produce, prose writer, proxy, rain, relief, relieve, replace, replacement, represent, representative, reserves, revenant, reviewer, ride, ride the sea, ringer, rolling, run, sail, scanning pattern, scarebabe, scarecrow, scarer, scenario writer, scenarist, scenarize, scintilla, scintillation, scribe, scriptwriter, scud, second string, secondary, shade, shading, shadow, shape, shoot, short-story writer, shrouded spirit, sign, skim, slip, snow, snowstorm, spares, specter, spectral ghost, spell, spell off, spirit, spook, sprite, stand in for, stand-in, storyteller, sub, subrogate, substituent, substitute, substitute for, substitution, succedaneum, succeed, succubus, suggestion, supersede, superseder, supplant, supplanter, surrogate, swap places with, symbol, synecdoche, technical writer, terror, theophany, third string, throw on paper, token, trace, understudy, understudy for, unsubstantiality, utility player, vampire, vicar, vice-president, vice-regent, vision, walk the waters, walking dead man, wandering soul, werewolf, word painter, wordsmith, wraith, write, writer, zombie