ghost
from
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006)
ghost
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}]
from
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Ghost \Ghost\ (g[=o]st), n. [OE. gast, gost, soul, spirit, AS.
g[=a]st breath, spirit, soul; akin to OS. g[=e]st spirit,
soul, D. geest, G. geist, and prob. to E. gaze, ghastly.]
[1913 Webster]
1. The spirit; the soul of man. [Obs.]
[1913 Webster]
Then gives her grieved ghost thus to lament.
--Spenser.
[1913 Webster]
2. The disembodied soul; the soul or spirit of a deceased
person; a spirit appearing after death; an apparition; a
specter.
[1913 Webster]
The mighty ghosts of our great Harrys rose. --Shak.
[1913 Webster]
I thought that I had died in sleep,
And was a blessed ghost. --Coleridge.
[1913 Webster]
3. Any faint shadowy semblance; an unsubstantial image; a
phantom; a glimmering; as, not a ghost of a chance; the
ghost of an idea.
[1913 Webster]
Each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the
floor. --Poe.
[1913 Webster]
4. A false image formed in a telescope by reflection from the
surfaces of one or more lenses.
[1913 Webster]
{Ghost moth} (Zool.), 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 the ghost} or {To yield up the ghost}, to die; to
expire.
[1913 Webster]
And he gave up the ghost full softly. --Chaucer.
[1913 Webster]
Jacob . . . yielded up the ghost, and was gathered
unto his people. --Gen. xlix.
33.
[1913 Webster]
from
The Devil's Dictionary (1881-1906)
GHOST, n. The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.
He saw a ghost.
It occupied -- that dismal thing! --
The path that he was following.
Before he'd time to stop and fly,
An earthquake trifled with the eye
That saw a ghost.
He fell as fall the early good;
Unmoved that awful vision stood.
The stars that danced before his ken
He wildly brushed away, and then
He saw a post.
Jared Macphester
Accounting for the uncommon behavior of ghosts, Heine mentions
somebody's ingenious theory to the effect that they are as much
afraid of us as we of them. Not quite, if I may judge from such
tables of comparative speed as I am able to compile from memories of
my own experience.
There is one insuperable obstacle to a belief in ghosts. A ghost
never comes naked: he appears either in a winding-sheet or "in his
habit as he lived." To believe in him, then, is to believe that not
only have the dead the power to make themselves visible after there is
nothing left of them, but that the same power inheres in textile
fabrics. Supposing the products of the loom to have this ability,
what object would they have in exercising it? And why does not the
apparition of a suit of clothes sometimes walk abroad without a ghost
in it? These be riddles of significance. They reach away down and
get a convulsive grip on the very tap-root of this flourishing faith.
from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
ghost
<chat> (Or "zombie") The image of a user's session on {IRC}
and similar systems, left when the session has been terminated
(properly or, often, improperly) but the server (or the
network at large) believes the connection is still active and
belongs to a real user.
Compare {clonebot}.
(1997-04-07)
from
Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary
Ghost
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}.)
from
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
268 Moby Thesaurus words for "ghost":
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
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