Errand-ghost
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A spirit or spiritual messenger; an angel.
"Their simple directness of character may account for the well-nigh entire absence (as I said before) of all expression of religious hope. "God's Errand-Ghost," the Rider on the Pale Horse, has passed by that way, and one in the house — it may be the most loved of all, — is dead. There is no shirking of that bare truth, no attempt to soften it."
- 2 Any spirit or ghostly messenger. broadly
"In regard of the previous question – do you also choose empty localizations deliberately? Is this to strengthen the fright for loneliness and silence, the same fright that the errand ghost of those haunted places feels?"
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Their simple directness of character may account for the well-nigh entire absence (as I said before) of all expression of religious hope. "God's Errand-Ghost," the Rider on the Pale Horse, has passed by that way, and one in the house — it may be the most loved of all, — is dead. There is no shirking of that bare truth, no attempt to soften it."
Etymology
From errand + ghost, a modern calque of Old English ǣrendgāst (“spiritual messenger, angel”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.