ghost – English noun declension

English noun forms of ghost

Noun: ghost
Singularghost
Pluralghosts

Sample Sentences

  • Everyone believed that the ghost of an old lady haunted the crypt.
  • He believes in ghosts.
  • The mighty ghosts of our great Harries rose. [1667, John Dryden, Annus Mirabilis: The Year of Wonders, 1666. […], London: […] Henry Herringman, […], →OCLC, (please specify the stanza number):]
  • I thought that I had died in sleep/And was a blessed ghost [1798, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere:]
  • For a moment I was puzzled, but presently, of course, it struck me that he must have seen Ayesha, wrapped in her grave-like garment, and been deceived by the extraordinary undulating smoothness of her walk into a belief that she was a white ghost gliding towards him. [1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:]
  • Hepaticology, outside the temperate parts of the Northern Hemisphere, still lies deep in the shadow cast by that ultimate "closet taxonomist," Franz Stephani—a ghost whose shadow falls over us all. [1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, Chicago, Ill.: Field Museum of Natural History, →ISBN, page vii:]
  • hen gins her grieued ghost thus to lament and mourne. [1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 31:]
  • Enlightening the eyes and a taste for hope, emotions are felt from an inward ghost. [2013, Kenneth Palmer, Just Thoughts: Looking at Man's Whole Self, page 20:]
  • If I thought that “I” referred to my inner ghost, I wouldn't be worried because a bullet can't hurt a ghost, and equally there would be no point in your shooting. [2014, Neville Moray, Science, Cells and Souls: An Introduction to Human Nature:]
  • It also required four years of finding your inner ghost and becoming one with it. The inner ghost is within every person who is still alive. [2017, Anastasia Burton, You and I, in a Thousand Moons:]
  • not a ghost of a chance
  • the ghost of an idea
  • And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. [1845 February, — Quarles [pseudonym; Edgar Allan Poe], “The Raven”, in The American Review, volume I, number II, New York, N.Y.; London: Wiley & Putnam, […], →OCLC:]
  • Armistead Maupin's novels reflect more awareness of, and affection for, the texture of real life than As If After Sex. Maupin's characters may get into cartoonlike adventures, but they are real people. Torchia's characters do drearily familiar things, but they are ghosts. [1984 December 29, Duncan Mitchel, “The Cult of Gay Machismo”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 25, page 14:]
  • Earless ghost swift moths become “invisible” to echolocating bats by forming mating clusters close (less than half a meter) above vegetation and effectively blending into the clutter of echoes that the bat receives from the leaves and stems around them. [2013 May-June, William E. Conner, “An Acoustic Arms Race”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, archived from the original on 17 Jul 2013, pages 206–7:]
  • […] She barely answers his questions. She’s a ghost of herself. And then Hot Pie gives us the key to Arya’s whole thing this season so far: She didn’t know that Jon had defeated the Boltons. [2017 July 23, Brandon Nowalk, “The great game begins with a bang on Game Of Thrones (newbies)”, in The Onion AV Club:]
  • There was less flicker, jitter was nonexistent, and the screen pattern had been rendered far more viewworthy, with ghosts being virtually suppressed. [2007, Albert Abramson, The History of Television, 1942 to 2000, page 60:]
  • Regardless of GRM used, graffiti ghosts persist. Protect cladding with surface coating or replace with graffiti resistant paint or laminate. [1992, M. J. Whitford, Getting Rid of Graffiti, Routledge, →ISBN, page 45:]
  • I’ve written both as a ghost for experts and under my name.
  • Some health systems are plagued by "ghost" and "absent" workers. Ghost workers are nonexistent, listed in the payroll, and paid, a clear sign of corruption. [2004, Joint Learning Initiative, Global Equity Initiative, Human Resources for Health: Overcoming the Crisis, page 76:]
  • 1,500 secondary schools in Jiangxi found 125 cases of illegally collected Ghosts and Absentees fees worth $2 million. [2008, The Asia-Pacific Human Development Report, page 63:]
  • Before filling out this form, please visit the Pennsic Pre-Registration Page to create your account and enter your campers and ghosts [nonexistent campers one pays for to legitimately increase the size of one's allotted camping space]. [2023, Barony of Ponte Alto, Society for Creative Anachronism, Ponte Alto Pennsic Encampment 2023 - Barony Registration]
  • This will let you open a query with NickServ again so you can remove your “ghost” from the server: […] [2004, Paul Mutton, IRC Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools, page 31:]
  • This is also the case for some racing games (Super Mario Kart is a good example) that allow you to compete against your ghosts, which are precise recordings of your performance. [2012, Keith Burgun, Game Design Theory: A New Philosophy for Understanding Games:]
  • "[…]no record of a Robert, or Bobby, Maclain that fits our man's description," Kuzbec said. "No social, no driver's license, no address, no military service record. He's a ghost." Kirov did find that interesting. [2014 August 19, Michael Sloan, The Equalizer: A Novel, Macmillan, →ISBN, page 156:]
  • "He's a ghost. No record of any kind, anywhere. I got nothing when I did a trace. I'm thinking he was either erased or he's something we don't know about." Nyk rubbed at his jaw. "If he was erased, Syn, he'd have a record[…]" [2015 November 3, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Born of Betrayal: The League: Nemesis Rising, St. Martin's Press, →ISBN:]
  • The proof is well known, and independent of the metric, but to make certain we prove it here also for the case when the state vector system of an operator contains multipole^([sic]) ghosts. [1966, Kàzmèr L. Nagy, State Vector Spaces with Indefinite Metric in Quantum Field Theory, page 14:]
  • Soon after, the proof of the No-Ghost Theorem, establishing that the DRM has no ghosts if d ≤ 26, was achieved independently by Brower (1972) and by Goddard and Thorn (1972). [2019, Radin Dardashti, Richard Dawid, Karim Thébault, Why Trust a Theory?, page 180:]
  • 彁 is a ghost character from the Japanese JIS X 0208 character set.
  • Spicy or mild, lovely bells or scary ghosts, peppers belong in your garden. Not only are they delicious, they add a gorgeous pop of color to vegetable gardens. When starting pepper seeds, consider using a heat mat. [2018 October 2, Julie Thompson-Adolf, Starting & Saving Seeds: Grow the Perfect Vegetables, Fruits, Herbs, and Flowers for Your Garden, Cool Springs Press, →ISBN, page 68:]
  • Fresh chili has a glossy smooth skin like a bell pepper...unless you're in scorching territory, with the likes of Ghosts or Reapers (their name should give the game away), where the skin looks [wrinkled]. [2022 July 5, Alice Zaslavsky, In Praise of Veg: The Ultimate Cookbook for Vegetable Lovers, Appetite by Random House, →ISBN:]
  • GHOST. This is a spelling game. A person gives a letter, […] his next neighbor must think of a word beginning with this letter, and then say the second letter, […] [1897, Emma J. Gray, Fun for the Household: A Book of Games, page 110:]
  • […]word is, you win the round. But be warned : if she does have a real word in mind, you lose. Bluffing[:] It's possible to bluff in Ghost. For example, you can pretend to add a suffix to a word, even if that word doesn't exist. If no[…] [2008 04, Joanne O'Sullivan, I Don't Care If We're There Yet: The Backseat Boredom Buster, Lark Books, →ISBN, page 183:]
  • […]played ghost, which was a popular word game at that time. Ghost was a very convenient game since it required no props, lights, or space. Each player must add a letter to the continuous formation of a word supplied by the previous player[…] [2013 July 17, Milton Pashcow, Sicilian Escapade: A Devil in Eden, Xlibris Corporation, →ISBN, page 21:]
  • […]played ghost, a word game. For quite a while, I spent most of my time at their house. I can't remember why I lived with them or exactly where my mother and my older brothers, Ben and John, were after Dad left.[…] [2018 June 12, Edward M. Hallowell, Because I Come from a Crazy Family: The Making of a Psychiatrist, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, →ISBN, page 26:]
  • Another game in which your phonotactic instincts are brought to bear is "Ghost," a good car game for spelling geeks. In Ghost, players take turns adding a letter to a string of letters. The letter added must create the beginning of a correctly spelled word, but you don't want to add a letter which will complete[…] [2017 November 1, Heidi Harley, English Words: A Linguistic Introduction, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN:]
  • ghost slug
  • ghost flower
  • ghost ant
  • ghost catfish
  • ghost town
  • ghost ship
  • ghost apples (a thin layer of ice in the shape of an apple, which forms around it and is left behind when the apple rots and falls out)
  • ghost fossils (impressions of things like shells that remain in the rock after the shell etc dissolves)
  • ghost cell
  • ghost craters (craters that have been filled, e.g. with volcanic deposits)
  • ghost image
  • ghost cellphone vibration
  • ghost pain
  • ghost island
  • ghost voter
  • ghost job
  • ghost rocket
  • ghost deer
  • ghost writer
  • ghost singer

Etymology

1. The noun is derived from Middle English gost, from Old English gāst, gǣst (“breath, spirit, soul, ghost”) (compare modern English Holy Ghost), from Proto-West Germanic *gaist, from Proto-Germanic *gaistaz, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰéysdos, from *ǵʰéysd- (“anger, agitation”).
2. The h in the spelling appears in the Prologue to William Caxton’s Royal Book, printed in 1484, in a reference to the “Holy Ghoost”. It was likely influenced by Middle Dutch gheest, a common variant of geest. Both Caxton and his assistant Wynkyn de Worde had connections to the Low Countries. Doublet of geist.
3. The adjective and verb are derived from the noun. The verb gained prominence in the 2010s.
4. cognates
5. * Danish gast (“ghost”), gejst (“enthusiasm”)
6. * Dutch geest (“ghost, spirit”)
7. * German Geist (“ghost, spirit”)
8. * Luxembourgish Geescht (“ghost, spirit, spectre, phantom”)
9. * Saterland Frisian Gäist, Jeest (“ghost, spirit”)
10. * Scots gaist, ghaist (“ghost”)
11. * Swedish gast (“ghost”)
12. * Vilamovian gȧjst (“ghost, spirit”)
13. * West Frisian geast (“ghost, spirit”)
14. * Yiddish גײַסט (gayst, “ghost, spirit”)
15. * Yola gaast (“ghost”) See: Middle English Nouns 'gost', English Nouns 'Holy Ghost', Dutch Nouns 'geest', German Nouns 'Geist', Swedish Nouns 'gast'.

Verbs referencing "ghost"

German Nouns Geist, Dutch Nouns geest, Danish Nouns gejst.