Word.ws English Dictionary

in spirit

in spirit prepositional phrase: non-physically; in one's thoughts only.

Prepositional phrase

  1. Non-physically; in one's thoughts only.
    • I can’t make it to the party, but I’ll be there in spirit.
    • For I in spirit saw thee move
      ⁠Thro’ circles of the bounding sky;
      ⁠Week after week: the days go by:
      Come quick, thou bringest all I love.1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XVII”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 28
  2. In mood or manner.
    • Her writing has undergone a transformation; her newer works differ from the older ones in spirit.

Questions about in spirit

What does in spirit mean?
In spirit means non-physically; in one's thoughts only.
What part of speech is in spirit?
In spirit is a prepositional phrase.

Words near in spirit in the dictionary

  1. in sooth
  2. in sort
  3. in spades
  4. in special
  5. in specie
  6. in spirit
  7. in spite of
  8. in spite of oneself
  9. in spite of someone's teeth
  10. in splendor
  11. in splendour

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: in spirit (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: “in spirit.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/in_spirit. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.