| 释义 |
ghost
I. \ˈgōst\ noun
(-s)
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English gost, gast, from Old English gāst; akin to Old Saxon gēst spirit, Old High German geist spirit, Old Norse geiskafullr full of terror, Gothic usgaisjan to frighten, Sanskrit heḍa anger
1.
a. : the life principle or vital spark : the soul regarded as the seat of life or intelligence — now used chiefly in the phrase to give up the ghost
b. archaic : the spirit of man as distinguished from the body : the conscious being
< knowledge of what the world ought to be to us who are body and ghost together — Nathaniel Fairfax >
2.
a. : 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
< believe in the survival of the soul after death in the form of a ghost — Edward Sapir >
b. : apparition, specter
3. : spirit, demon
< that affable familiar ghost which nightly gulls him with intelligence — Shakespeare >
especially : a harmful or malevolent disembodied human spirit regarded as a power to be propitiated or averted by religious or magical rites
4. obsolete : person
< no knight so rude … as to do outrage to a sleeping ghost — Edmund Spenser >
5. obsolete : corpse
< a timely-parted ghost of ashy semblance, meager, pale, and bloodless — Shakespeare >
6. : a mark or visible sign left by something dead, lost, or no longer present : remains
< the ghost of grandeur that lingers between the walls of abandoned haciendas — Mary Austin >
7.
a. : a faint shadowy outline or semblance : trace
< would search the white skies for the ghost of a cloud — Vicki Baum >
b. : the least bit : iota, particle — usually used with preceding negative
< hadn't … the ghost of a prospect of raising the money — Christopher Isherwood >
< didn't have a ghost of a chance of defending himself against … this master killer — Frank Dufresne >
8. : a false image : reflection:
a. or ghost image : an unwanted or false image on a photographic negative caused by internal reflections in the camera lens
b. : a faint spurious line appearing in a grating spectrum as a result of a defect in the ruling of the grating
c. or ghost image : a faint double image appearing on a television screen as a result of the reflection of signals from external objects (as buildings) before they reach the receiving antenna
9. : one who does literary or artistic work for and in the name of another
< it is his lot to serve as ghost for successful comic-strip artists — John McCarten >
specifically : ghost-writer
10. : a tissue, cell, or other structure that does not stain normally because of degenerative changes; specifically : a red blood cell that has lost its hemoglobin
11. : a light band that alternates with a dark one or runs through a dark mass, appears on a tooled or polished surface of steel, and indicates a zone of material made harder by a difference in composition
12. ghosts plural but singular in construction [so called from the fact that the eliminated person is called a ghost] : a word game in which a player names a letter of the alphabet to which each succeeding player adds a letter that makes part of but does not complete a word, a player being eliminated from the game usually after five instances in which he has either completed a word or been guilty of adding a letter that does not contribute to making a word
13. : phantom
14. : an outline of a former crystal shape or rock structure bounded by inclusions that make it visible and outlined by bubbles or foreign substances
II. verb
(-ed/-ing/-s)
transitive verb
1. : to haunt like a ghost
< ask not … what madness ghosts this old man — Robert Burton >
2. : to write for and in the name of another
< the common report that he ghosted the whole document — Bruce Bliven b. 1889 >
intransitive verb
1.
a. : to move silently like a ghost
< the waiter ghosted up to the table — Hugh MacLennan >
b. : to sail quietly with or as if with no apparent wind
< all day the fleet ghosted westward in light southerly airs — S.E.Morison >
2. : to engage in writing for and in the name of another
< you have no qualms about ghosting — E.C.Marston > |