Word.ws English Dictionary

ghost words

ghost words is the plural of ghost word.

Meaning of ghost word

Noun

ghost word (plural ghost words)

  1. A fictitious or erroneous word, originally meaningless (not used in practice), that has been published in a dictionary or similarly authoritative reference work or otherwise listed as genuine, generally as the result of misinterpretation, misreading, or typographical error.
    • Here such cases as ghost words & misglosses, secondary semantics, different etymologies for one etymon or one etymology for different etyma, and finally semantic overpermissiveness are discussed.2006, Folia orientalia - Volumes 42-43, page 467
    Synonyms:
    phantom word

Questions about ghost words

What is ghost words the plural of?
Ghost words is the plural of ghost word.

Words near ghost words in the dictionary

  1. ghost voters
  2. ghost votes
  3. ghost voting
  4. ghost wolf
  5. ghost word
  6. ghost words
  7. ghost work
  8. ghost write
  9. ghost writer
  10. ghost writers
  11. ghost writes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ghost words (page history and authors); ghost word (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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