ghast

English

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.

Pronunciation

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Verb

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

1. Alternative form of gast

Derived terms

• aghast
• beghast
• ghastful, ghastfull
• ghastly
• ghastness

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

ghastly, weird

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^[1], 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.

Translations

evil spirit or monster

• French: épouvant (fr) m

Anagrams

• Ghats, ghats