Ghost (?), n. [OE. gast, gost, soul, spirit, AS. gast breath, spirit, soul; akin to OS. gst spirit, soul, D. geest, G. geist, and prob. to E. gaze, ghastly.]
1.
The spirit; the soul of man.
[Obs.]
Then gives her grieved ghost thus to lament.
Spenser.
2.
The disembodied soul; the soul or spirit of a deceased person; a spirit appearing after death; an apparition; a specter.
The mighty ghosts of our great Harrys rose.
Shak.
I thought that I had died in sleep,
And was a blessed ghost.
Coleridge.
3.
Any faint shadowy semblance; an unsubstantial image; a phantom; a glimmering; as, not a ghost of a chance; the ghost of an idea.
Each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Poe.
4.
A false image formed in a telescope by reflection from the surfaces of one or more lenses.
Ghost moth Zool., a large European moth (Hepialus humuli); so called from the white color of the male, and the peculiar hovering flight; -- called also great swift. -- Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit; the Paraclete; the Comforter; Theol. the third person in the Trinity. -- To give up ∨ yield up the ghost, to die; to expire.
And he gave up the ghost full softly.
Chaucer.
Jacob . . . yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people.
Gen. xlix. 33.
© Webster 1913.
Ghost, v. i.
To die; to expire.
[Obs.]
Sir P. Sidney.
© Webster 1913.
Ghost, v. t.
To appear to or haunt in the form of an apparition.
[Obs.]
Shak.
© Webster 1913.