different between ghost vs uncanny

English

Alternative forms

• ghoast, gost (both obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English gost, gast, from Old English g?st (“breath, soul, spirit, ghost, being”), from Proto-West Germanic *gaist, from Proto-Germanic *gaistaz (“ghost, spirit”), from Proto-Indo-European *??éysd-os, from *??éysd- (“anger, agitation”). Cognate with Scots ghaist (“ghost”), Saterland Frisian Gäist (“spirit”), West Frisian geast (“spirit”), Dutch geest (“spirit, mind, ghost”), German Geist (“spirit, mind, intellect”), Swedish gast (“ghost”), Sanskrit ??? (hé?a, “anger, hatred”), Persian ???? (zešt, “ugly, hateful, disgusting”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /???st/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?o?st/
• Rhymes: -??st

Noun

ghost (countable and uncountable, plural ghosts)

1. (dated) The spirit; the soul of man.
2. The disembodied soul; the soul or spirit of a deceased person; a spirit appearing after death
   • 1667, John Dryden, Annus Mirabilis

     The mighty ghosts of our great Harries rose.
3. Any faint shadowy semblance; an unsubstantial image

4. A false image formed in a telescope, camera, or other optical device by reflection from the surfaces of one or more lenses.
5. An unwanted image similar to and overlapping or adjacent to the main one on a television screen, caused by the transmitted image being received both directly and via reflection.
   • 2007, Albert Abramson, The History of Television, 1942 to 2000 (page 60)

     There was less flicker, jitter was nonexistent, and the screen pattern had been rendered far more viewworthy, with ghosts being virtually suppressed.

6. A ghostwriter.
7. (Internet) An unresponsive user on IRC, resulting from the user's client disconnecting without notifying the server.
8. (computing) An image of a file or hard disk.
9. (theater) An understudy.
10. (espionage) A covert (and deniable) agent.
11. The faint image that remains after an attempt to remove graffiti.
12. (video games) An opponent in a racing game that follows a previously recorded route, allowing players to compete against previous best times.
13. A dead person whose identity is stolen by another. See ghosting.
14. (attributive, in names of species) White or pale.

15. (attributive, in names of species) Transparent or translucent.

16. (attributive) Abandoned.

17. (attributive) Remnant; the remains of a(n).

18. (attributive) Perceived or listed but not real.

19. (attributive) Of cryptid, supernatural or extraterrestrial nature.

20. (attributive) Substitute.

21. (uncountable) A game in which players take turns to add a letter to a possible word, trying not to complete a word.

Synonyms

• (soul): essence, soul, spirit
• (spirit appearing after death): apparition, bogey, haint, phantom, revenant, specter/spectre, spook, wraith.
• (faint shadowy semblance): glimmer, glimmering, glimpse, hint, inkling, phantom, spark, suggestion.
• (false image in an optical device):
• (false image on a television screen): echo
• (ghostwriter): ghostwriter
• (unresponsive user):
• (image of file): backup
• (understudy): understudy
• (covert agent): spook, spy
• (image from removed graffiti): shadow
• (opponent in racing game):
• (victim of stolen identity):
• See also Thesaurus:ghost

Derived terms

Descendants

• ? Japanese: ???? (g?suto)

Translations

See also

Verb

ghost (third-person singular simple present ghosts, present participle ghosting, simple past and past participle ghosted)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To haunt; to appear to in the form of an apparition.
   • 1606, William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act II, sc. 6, l. 1221

     since Julius Caesar, / Who at Philippi the good Brutus ghosted

2. (obsolete) To die; to expire.
3. (transitive, intransitive) To ghostwrite.
   • 1975, Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift [Avon ed., 1976, p. 41]:

     Well, you wrote a few books, you wrote a famous play, and even that was half ghosted.

4. (nautical) To sail seemingly without wind.
5. (computing) To copy a file or hard drive image.
6. (graphical user interface) To gray out (a visual item) to indicate that it is unavailable.
   • 1991, Amiga User Interface Style Guide (page 76)

     Whenever a menu or menu item is inappropriate or unavailable for selection, it should be ghosted. Never allow the user to select something that does nothing in response.

7. (Internet, transitive) To forcibly disconnect an IRC user who is using one's reserved nickname.
   • 2001, "Luke", to leave (vb.): Hurg [OT] (on newsgroup alt.games.lucas-arts.monkey-island)

     I'm so untechnical that I once ghosted a registered IRC nick and then tried to identify myself to NickServ with the valid password before actually changing my nick to the aforementioned moniker.

8. (intransitive) To appear or move without warning, quickly and quietly; to slip.
9. (transitive) To transfer (a prisoner) to another prison without the prior knowledge of other inmates.
   • 2020, Jamie Bennett, ?Victoria Knight, Prisoners on Prison Films (page 26)

     His power base, however, is undermined by him being constantly, “ghosted”, or moved from prison to prison.

10. (slang) To kill.
11. (slang) To break up with someone without warning or explanation; to perform an act of ghosting.
12. (transitive, slang) To ignore (a person).
13. (film) To provide the speaking or singing voice for another actor, who is lip-syncing.
    • 1955, Saturday Review (volume 38, part 2, page 27)

      Here's how it went: Larry Parks as elderly Al Jolson was watching Larry Parks playing young Al Jolson in the first movie — in other words, Parks ghosting for Parks. At the same time, Jolson himself was ghosting the voices for both of them.

    • 1999, The Golden Age of Musicals (page 50)

      One of the few performers to triumph over ghosting was Ava Gardner in Freed's Show Boat (1951). Not only does she lip-synch with breathtaking accuracy, her performance gives the cotton-candy production its only underpinning of realism.

Derived terms

• beghost

Anagrams

• Goths, gosht, goths

English

Etymology

From un- +? canny; thus “beyond one's ken,” or outside one's familiar knowledge or perceptions. Compare Middle English unkanne (“unknown”).

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /?n?kæni/
• Rhymes: -æni

Adjective

uncanny (comparative uncannier, superlative uncanniest)

1. Strange, and mysteriously unsettling (as if supernatural); weird.
2. (Britain dialectal) Careless.

Translations

Noun

uncanny

1. (psychology, psychoanalysis, Freud) Something that is simultaneously familiar and strange, typically leading to feelings of discomfort; translation of Freud's usage of the German "unheimlich" (literally "unsecret").
   • 2011, Espen Dahl, Hans-Gunter Heimbrock, In Between: The Holy Beyond Modern Dichotomies, page 99:

     [The uncanny is] something that was long familiar to the psyche and was estranged from it only through being repressed. The link with repression now illuminates Schelling?s definition of the uncanny as ‘something that should have remained hidden and has come into the open.’ (Freud: 2003, 147 f)

   • 2003, Nicholas Royle, The Uncanny, page 1 [1]:

     The uncanny involves feelings of uncertainty, in particular regarding the reality of who one is and what is being experienced.

   • 2011, Anneleen Masschelein, The Unconcept: The Freudian Uncanny in Late-Twentieth-Century Theory, page 2 [2]:

     Because the uncanny affects and haunts everything, it is in constant transformation and cannot be pinned down.

   • 2001, Diane Jonte-Pace, Speaking the Unspeakable, page 81 [3]:

     In the preceding chapter, we saw that Freud linked the maternal body, death, and the afterlife with the uncanny in his famous essay "The Uncanny" ("Das Unheimliche").

   • 1982, Samuel Weber, The Legend of Freud, page 20 [4]:

     This uncontrollable possibility—the possibility of a certain loss of control—can, perhaps, explain why the uncanny remains a marginal notion even within psychoanalysis itself.

   • 2005, Barbara Creed, Phallic Panic, page vii [5]:

     Freud argued that the uncanny was particularly associated with feelings of horror aroused by the figure of the paternal castrator, neglecting the tropes of woman and animal as a source of the uncanny.

   • 1994, Sonu Shamdasani and Michael Münchow, Speculations after Freud, page 186 [6]:

     As is well known, Freud introduced the concept of the uncanny into psychoanalysis in 1919 and used The Sandman as a prime illustration for his definition.

Usage notes

In common modern usage, "canny" and "uncanny" are no longer antonyms, although they are not synonyms.

Derived terms

• uncanny valley
• uncannily

Related terms

Translations

References