Word.ws English Dictionary

errand-ghost

errand-ghost noun: a spirit or spiritual messenger; an angel.

Noun

errand-ghost (plural errand-ghosts)

  1. A spirit or spiritual messenger; an angel.
    • Their simple directness of character may account for the well-nigh entire absence (as I said before) of all expression of religious hope. "God's Errand-Ghost," the Rider on the Pale Horse, has passed by that way, and one in the house — it may be the most loved of all, — is dead. There is no...1900, Eleanor Vere Boyle, Seven gardens and a palace
    • If that was really insulting, please don't be offended. I certainly don't think of you as my errand-ghost. Actually, I think of you as my friend.2008, Letters To the Ghost In My House
  2. (broadly) Any spirit or ghostly messenger.
    • In regard of the previous question – do you also choose empty localizations deliberately? Is this to strengthen the fright for loneliness and silence, the same fright that the errand ghost of those haunted places feels?2005, C. Jürschik y P. García, Interview with Jonathan Boakes
    • Death is not unknown to him, but she has perished / And her errand ghost wanders through the night.2011, Hugo Santander, Poems on America, the world, life and death

Examples of errand-ghost in a sentence

  • "God's Errand-Ghost," the Rider on the Pale Horse, has passed by that way, and one in the house — it may be the most loved of all, — is dead.1900, Eleanor Vere Boyle, Seven gardens and a palace:
  • If Jesus were not God, He would have told lede to not worship Him, just as the errand-ghost in Bring to Lightings did.2012, Yahoo! Canada Answers, Is Jesus God? Did Jesus ever claim to be God?:
  • The three errand-ghosts were all extremely ugly. […] The errand-ghosts then took the two souls back to Diling, deposited them at the wind-rain bridge leading into the village, and disappeared.2021, Changzhen Li, 100 Cases of Reincarnation Among Dong People:

Forms of errand-ghost

pluralerrand-ghosts
alternative formerrand ghost

Origin of errand-ghost

Revived from Old English ǣrendgāst (“spiritual messenger, angel”). By surface analysis, errand + ghost.

Questions about errand-ghost

What does errand-ghost mean?
Errand-ghost means a spirit or spiritual messenger; an angel.
How do you use errand-ghost in a sentence?
"God's Errand-Ghost," the Rider on the Pale Horse, has passed by that way, and one in the house — it may be the most loved of all, — is dead.
What part of speech is errand-ghost?
Errand-ghost is a noun.
What is the plural of errand-ghost?
The plural of errand-ghost is errand-ghosts.

Words near errand-ghost in the dictionary

  1. errand
  2. errand boy
  3. errand boys
  4. errand ghost
  5. errand ghosts
  6. errand-ghost
  7. errand-ghosts
  8. erranded
  9. erranding
  10. errands
  11. errandy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: errand-ghost (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “errand-ghost.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/errand-ghost. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.