Ghost Words

In 1886, a lexicographer named Walter Skeat first used the phrase “ghost words” to describe words that he said had “no real existence.” In other words, ghost words are words that weren’t real to begin with—they made it into the dictionary because of an error or misunderstanding.

Gravy

For example, it appears that “gravy” only became a word because a 14th-century translator misread a French cookbook. (1, 2) In Old French, the word was spelled with an N: “grane” (also sometimes spelled “grain”), and it was related to the word “grain,” which according to the Oxford English Dictionary meant “anything used in cooking” at the time. 

But English cookbooks translated from French in the 14th century and later nearly always have a V or a U instead of the N, leading to the word “gravy” that sounds so right to us today. Researchers believe it was simply a transcription error. If the word had been transcribed properly, we’d be having “grany” on our mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving.

Syllabus

In the 15th century, a misprint gave us another ghost word: “syllabus.”  The Roman philosopher Cicero died in 43 BC, but his work has been read ever since. Two of his “Letters to Atticus” (one, two) have the word “sittybas” (or possibly “sittubas”—sources disagree). Either way, it was a Greek word meaning “a label for a book or parchment” or “title-slip,” but one printing of this work mistakenly spelled the word as “syllabus.” (3, 4)

People apparently thought “syllabus” was Latin, and the spelling stuck so well that “syllabus” took on its new meaning in the mid-1600s and now even has a fake Latin plural: “syllabi” (although “syllabuses” is also listed as an option in all the dictionaries I checked.)

Tweed

Here’s a more recent misunderstanding that gave us a new word. We got the word “tweed”—a type of wool—from a misunderstanding of the Scottish word “tweel,” which was how the Scots said “twill.” That mistake may have happened because there’s a Tweed river in Scotland, so when people heard or saw “tweel,” they thought of the Tweed River; but regardless of how it happened, “tweed” became an established word for the cloth in London in the mid-1800s...

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