The Spirited History of ‘Ghost’

In Word Through The Times, we trace how one word or phrase has changed throughout the history of the newspaper.

In 2015, the reporter Valeriya Safronova explained the new “ultimate silent treatment”: ghosting. To ghost someone, she wrote, was to end a romantic relationship “by cutting off all contact and ignoring the former partner’s attempts to reach out.” She cited examples: Charlize Theron had stopped answering Sean Penn’s calls and text messages. A man ghosted the woman he was dating for about eight months, leaving her to attend a wedding solo. Brutal.

Though cowardly people have ended their relationships with an Irish exit for some time, “ghosting,” as a slang term, gained popularity in the mid 2010s, amid the rise of dating apps and social media. To “ghost” someone was formally added to Merriam Webster in 2017, along with other popular slang words and phrases such as “throw shade.”

Unlike an ex who disappears from your life, the original meaning of “ghost” embodied the opposite — a presence. Ghost came into Old English as gast, meaning “soul, spirit,” according to a 1999 On Language column in The New York Times. It wasn’t until the 14th century, per the Oxford English Dictionary, that a ghost had a physical form — represented by children on Oct. 31 with a white bedsheet.

The Times has an interesting history of covering the paranormal. In December 1895, for example, an article on the front page recounted a ghost sighting in Sag Harbor, N.Y. “A number of young men have seen a ghost several times recently while on their way home late at night,” the article read. “The apparition usually jumps up from behind a bush, and is described as wearing a high hat and carrying an army musket.”

Unrelated to apparitions, the phrase “ghost town,” referring instead to “a once-flourishing town wholly or nearly deserted,” arose in the late 1800s; some sources say the phrase evolved out of the boom and bust of gold mining towns in California. A Times article from 1935 reviewed a film set in a ghost town with one inhabitant: “Old Abner Meadows, a mind-fogged prospector who still believes there’s gold in the hills.” The phrase was revived in the later half of the 20th century to describe a quiet resort area after its busy season.

In 1949, the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle wasn’t talking about travel or spirits when he coined the phrase “ghost in the machine” to describe a philosophical concept he disagreed with: that the mind — the ghost — is separate from the body, or the machine. Our journey to understand the relationship between mind and body is ongoing.

That pursuit has only become more relevant with the rise of artificial intelligence. Can A.I., without a physical body, master true intelligence? That is a question posted in a recent Times article by Oliver Whang.

“Is the mind a car on the road?” Mr. Whang asked. “A ghost in the machine?”

The jury’s still out.