“ghost” – English explanatory dictionary

noun 1. an image of a dead person which appears ○ They say the house is haunted by the ghost of its former owner. ○ Her face is white – she looks as if she has seen a ghost. □ to give up the ghost to die 2. □ not to have a ghost of a chance to have no chance at all ○ She’s gone in for the competition, but she doesn’t have a ghost of a chance of winning. ■ verb to write a book for someone else whose name will appear on the book as the author ○ He’s ghosting the boxer’s memoirs.

“the GHOST doesn’t walk,” a theatrical term which implies that
there is no money about, and that there will be no “treasury.”

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 (Zoöl.), 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 or 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.

v. i. To die; to expire. [Obs.] Sir P. Sidney.

v. t. To appear to or haunt in the form of an apparition. [Obs.] Shak.