A ghost word is a word published in a dictionary or similarly authoritative reference work, having rarely, if ever, been used in practice, and hitherto having been meaningless. As a rule a ghost word will have originated from an error, such as a misinterpretation, mispronunciation, or misreading, or from typographical or linguistic confusion. Once authoritatively published, a ghost word occasionally may be copied widely and take a long time to be erased from usage.
Origin
The term ghost words was coined and originally presented in public by Professor Walter William Skeat in his annual address as president of the Philological Society in 1886. He said in part: It turned out that "kimes" was a misprint for "knives", but the word gained currency for some time. A more drastic example followed, also cited in Skeat's address: One example of such an edition of The Monastery was published by the Edinburgh University Press in 1820.
More examples
In his address, Skeat exhibited about 100 more specimens that he had collected. Other examples include:
The supposed Homeric Greek word στήτη = "woman", which arose thus: In Iliad Book 1 line 6 is the phrase διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε = "two stood apart making strife". However someone unfamiliar with dual number verb inflections read it as διά στήτην ἐρίσαντε = "two making strife because of a stētē", and he guessed that stētē meant the woman Briseis who was the subject of the strife.
The placename Sarum, which arose by misunderstanding of the abbreviation Sar~ used in a medieval manuscript to mean some early form such as "Sarisberie".
As an example of an editing mistake, "dord" was defined as a noun meaning density. When the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary was being prepared, an index card that read "D or d" with reference to the word "density" was incorrectly misfiled as a word instead of an abbreviation. The entry existed in more than one printing from 1934 to 1947.
A Concise Dictionary of Pronunciation accidentally included the nonexistent word testentry, with spurious British and US pronunciations as though it rhymed with pedantry.
The OED explains the ghost word Phantomnation as "Appearance of a phantom; illusion. Error for phantom nation". Alexander Pope's translation of the Odyssey originally said, "The Phantome-nations of the dead". Richard Paul Jodrell's Philology of the English Language, which omitted hyphens from compounds, entered it as one word, "Phantomnation, a multitude of spectres". Lexicographers copied this error into various dictionaries, such as, "Phantomnation, illusion. Pope.", and "Phantomnation, appearance as of a phantom; illusion. Pope.".
The Japanese word kusege was mistranslated as vicious hair in the authoritative Kenkyūsha's New Japanese-English Dictionary from the first edition to the fourth, and corrected in the fifth edition "twisted hair; hair that stands up". This phantom word was not merely an unnoticed lexicographical error, generations of dictionary users copied the mistake. For example, a Tokyo hospital of cosmetic surgery had a long-running display advertisement in the Asian edition of Newsweek that read, "Kinky or vicious hair may be changed to a lovely, glossy hair". This hair-straightening ad was jokingly used in the "Kinky Vicious" title of a 2011 Hong KongiPhoneography photo exhibition.
The JIS X 0208 standard, the most widespread system to handle Japanese language with computers since 1978, has entries for 12 kanji that have no known use and were probably included by mistake. They are called 幽霊文字 and are still supported by most computer systems.
In his book , Dmitri Borgmann shows how feamyng, a purported collective noun for ferrets which appeared in several dictionaries, is actually the result of a centuries-long chain of typographical or misread-handwriting errors.
In the Irish language, the word cigire was invented by the scholar Tadhg Ua Neachtain, who misread cighim in Edward Lhuyd's Archaeologia Britannica as cigim, and so constructed the verbal forms cigire, cigireacht, cigirim etc. from it.
Speculative examples
Many neologisms, including those that eventually develop into established usages, are of obscure origin, and some might well have originated as ghost words through illiteracy, such as the term "okay". However, establishing the true origin often is not possible, partly for lack of documentation, and sometimes through obstructive efforts on the part of pranksters. The most popular etymology of the word pumpernickel bread - that Napoleon described it as "C'est pain pour Nicole!", being only fit for his horse - is thought to be a deliberate hoax. "Quiz" also has been associated with apparently deliberate false etymology. All these words and many more have remained in common usage, but they may well have been ghost words in origin.
A recent, incorrect use of the term "ghost word" refers to coining a new word implied logically from a real word, often etymologically incorrectly. The correct term for such a derivation is back-formation, a word that has been established since the late 19th century. An example is "beforemath" which is derived from "". A back-formation cannot become a ghost word; as a rule it would clash with Skeat's precise definition, which requires that the word forms have "no meaning".
