Welcome to the Street Prophets Coffee Hour cleverly hidden at the intersection of religion and politics. This is an open thread where we can share our thoughts and comments about the day. While beliefs about what happens after death vary greatly in the cultures and religious traditions around the world, a common theme found in many cultures is the belief that a dead person’s soul can become a ghost. In many cultures, it is believed that ghosts can be seen by and interact with humans. There are times when it is felt that ghosts can harm humans and at other times ghosts may help humans.
In modern English, the word ghost comes from the Old English gast meaning “breath; good or bad spirit, angel, demon; person, man, human being.” The Old English gast seems to come from the Proto-West Germanic *gaistaz which comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *gheis- which was used in forming words associated with excitement, amazement, and fear. This is also the root for the Old English gæstan which means “to frighten.”
In Old English, gast was simply a synonym for spirit or soul. It wasn’t until the fourteenth century that gast was used to describe the disembodied spirit of a dead person.
The Old English gast eventually become the Middle English gost. The gh spelling seems to have come about with the introduction of the printing press. William Caxton started printing in Westminster, England, in 1476. Printing helped to standardize English. When Caxton started his printing business, the English language was in flux. In translating from the spoken language to the written language Caxton had to begin the process of standardization with regard to spelling, word usage, grammar, and so on. With regard to spelling, some historians credit Caxton with inserting the silent h in ghost which may have been inspired by the Flemish gheest. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the ghost spelling was common and became the standard spelling.
The gh spelling in ghastly is based on the gh spelling of ghost and was first used by the poet Edmund Spenser. Ghastly is from the Middle English verb gasten meaning “to terrify.” John Ayto, in his Dictionary of Word Origins, reports that “ghastly is not related to ghost.”
Haunt
One of the things that ghosts do is that they haunt people and places. The word haunt came into English in the early thirteenth century with the meaning “to practice habitually, busy oneself with, to take part in.” Haunt is from the Old French hanter meaning “to frequent, visit regularly; have to do with, be familiar with; indulge in, cultivate.” While hanter is of an uncertain origin, some etymologists feel that it may have been borrowed from the Old Norse heimta meaning “bring home” which is from the Proto-Germanic *haimatjanan meaning “to go or bring home” which is from the Proto-Indo-European root *tkei- meaning “to settle, dwell, be home.”
By the fourteenth century, to haunt had acquired a secondary meaning of “to have sexual intercourse with.”
The association of haunting with ghosts was revived or invented in Shakespeare’s plays, particularly in the 1590 A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Some etymologists feel that haunt in the sense of a ghost returning to a house where it had once lived may have existed in the Proto-Germanic, but that this meaning was later lost.
Death
In order to become a ghost and haunt a person or place, a person must first die. The word death is from the Old English dea meaning “total cessation of life” and comes from the Proto-Germanic *dauthuz which is probably from the Proto-Indo-European root *dheu- meaning “to die.”
Death, for many people, is an unpleasant subject and thus English has many euphemisms which are used to circumvent the word death:
- Give up the ghost
- Pass away, pass on
- Give up the struggle
- Kick the can, bucket
- Cross over
These are just a few of the death euphemisms which are used today. Feel free to add more in the comments.
Open Thread
This is an open thread—all topics are welcome.