ghast

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English

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Etymology 1

Variation of gast, from Middle English gasten, from Old English gāstan (“to meditate”) and gǣstan (“to gast, frighten, afflict, torment”). More at gast. Spelling influenced by ghost.

Verb

ghast (third-person singular simple present ghasts, present participle ghasting, simple past and past participle ghasted)

  1. Alternative form of gast.
Derived terms

Etymology 2

Poetic abbreviation of ghastly. Use as a noun influenced by ghost.

Adjective

ghast (comparative more ghast, superlative most ghast)

  1. Having a ghastly appearance; weird.
Translations

Noun

ghast (plural ghasts)

  1. (fantasy) An evil spirit or monster; a ghoul.
    • 2000, Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass:
      The cliff-ghast wrenched off the fox's head, and fought his brothers for the entrails.
    • 2007, Ian Irvine, Runcible Jones & the Buried City:
      The most powerful of all undead creatures, ghasts feed on ghosts, dead souls and, most especially, live ones. They want to take over Iltior and set up a ghast empire.
    • 2022, James Joshua Coleman, “The Fabulous Rhetorics of Queer Inhumanity”, in Jacqueline Rhodes, Jonathan Alexander, editors, The Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric‎, New York: Routledge, →ISBN:
      A malamanteau, or malapropistically used neologism that is also a portmanteau (yeah, isn't that a conceptual mouthful), the ghast was an incidental combination of ghost and ghastly As the post-interview continued, Carlos and I laughed as we recognized his malamanteau, what he chucklingly redescribed as a "ghastly ghost" "Ghast" is a neologism and portmanteau of ghost and ghastly that was used malapropistically. This, thus, constitutes a malamanteau.
    • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:ghast.
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