hungry ghost

hungry ghost noun: a type of supernatural being, condemned to desire more than it can consume; often depicted with large belly and tiny mouth.

Noun

hungry ghost (plural hungry ghosts)

(Chinese folk religion) A type of supernatural being, condemned to desire more than it can consume; often depicted with large belly and tiny mouth.
- Across Taiwan, households prepared offerings of food, alcohol, candles, flowers, washbowls and towels, in prayer for their ancestors and gods, and to placate the hungry ghosts. The streets filled will smoke as they burned paper money – gold for the gods and silver for the ghosts – in small metal...2021 August 30, Helen Davidson, Chi-hui Lin, “‘Not open for humans’: Covid changes east Asia’s Ghost Month but free spirits remain”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
Synonyms:

preta

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plural	hungry ghosts

What does hungry ghost mean?: Hungry ghost means a type of supernatural being, condemned to desire more than it can consume; often depicted with large belly and tiny mouth.
What is hungry ghost in Sanskrit?: Hungry ghost in Sanskrit is प्रेत (preta). See Hungry ghost meaning in Sanskrit.
What part of speech is hungry ghost?: Hungry ghost is a noun.
What is the plural of hungry ghost?: The plural of hungry ghost is hungry ghosts.

Adapted from Wiktionary: hungry 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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-hungry ghost.ogg.

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