Word for Wednesday: Ghost

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With Halloween at the end of the month, our Word for Wednesday theme for October is all things spooky and scary.

The first word this month is ghost.

A ghost is a spirit of a dead person that appears to the living, often as an image of what they looked like when they were alive. More recently the word has been used as a verb to describe the act of writing someone else’s work for them and, in an online dating context, the act of disappearing from a relationship by suddenly ending all communication. You can read about other words which have changed in meaning thanks to the internet and technology here.

Ghost comes from the Old English ‘gast’ which meant ‘good or bad spirit’ or, in Biblical usage, ‘soul or spirit’ (a meaning that is retained today in the phrase ‘Holy Ghost’). ‘Gast’ comes from the Proto-West Germanic ‘gaistaz’, possibly from the PIE root ‘gheis-’. The gh- spelling of the word appeared in English in the sixteenth century.

What’s your favourite ghost story?
 


07 Oct 2020
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