ghost Meaning, Definition & Usage

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

WordNet


Ghost noun
Etymology
OE. gast, gost, soul, spirit, AS. gast breath, spirit, soul; akin to OS. gst spirit, soul, D. geest, G. geist, and prob. to E. gaze, ghastly.
Definitions
  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.
    And he gave up the ghost full softly. Chaucer.
    Jacob . . . yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people. Gen. xlix. 33.
Ghost intransitive verb
Definitions
  1. To die; to expire. Obs. Sir P. Sidney.
Ghost transitive verb
Definitions
  1. To appear to or haunt in the form of an apparition. Obs. Shak.

Webster 1913