We trust our dictionaries. They are the silent, steadfast arbiters of language, the final word on what is, and is not, a word. But what if I told you that these hallowed reference books have been haunted? What if, lurking between the pages of well-established vocabulary, there are phantoms—words that look and feel real but have never truly been spoken, words born from nothing more than a slip of the pen or a printer’s tired eyes? Welcome to the strange and fascinating world of “ghost words.”
A ghost word is a lexical phantom. It’s a word that has appeared in a dictionary (sometimes for centuries) but has no legitimate origin or history of use in the language. It is, quite simply, an error that gained the sheen of authenticity by being printed in an authoritative source. Once canonized in one dictionary, these ghosts were often copied unquestioningly into the next, propagating a mistake across generations of scholarship.
These phantoms aren’t summoned by supernatural forces; they arise from mundane, all-too-human mistakes. Understanding their origins is the first step in the exorcism.
Perhaps the most famous ghost word in the English language is dord. For thirteen years, it lived a quiet, respectable life in one of America’s most prestigious dictionaries.
The story begins with the 1934 publication of the monumental Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition. On page 771, nestled between “Dorcopsis” (a type of wallaby) and “doré” (golden-brown), sat the entry:
dord (dôrd), n. Physics & Chem. Density.
It seemed plausible enough. But in 1939, an editor at G. & C. Merriam, Philip Babcock Gove, noticed something strange: the entry for “dord” had no etymology. This was a major red flag. Every word has a history, a family tree of sorts. “Dord” was an orphan.
Gove began his detective work. He delved into the dictionary’s archives, searching for the original citation slip that had prompted the word’s inclusion. He eventually found it. The slip read: “D or d”. It was intended to add “D” and “d” as abbreviations for the word “density.” But somewhere in the editorial process, the spacing was overlooked. A typist or editor had read “D or d” as a single, pronounceable word: “dord”.
The mistake was identified, and a correction slip was prepared. In 1947, the phantom was finally exorcised. The entry for “dord” was removed from the dictionary, never to return. The story of “dord” serves as the perfect illustration of how a simple clerical error can create a linguistic ghost that haunts the halls of lexicography for years.
“Dord” isn’t the only ghost to have rattled its chains in the dictionary. Lexicographical history is littered with them.
So how do we hunt these ghosts today? The work of the modern lexicographer has evolved from Philip Gove’s manual paper-chasing into a high-tech forensic science. The primary tool in their ghostbusting kit is corpus linguistics.
A corpus is a massive, searchable database of texts containing billions of words from books, newspapers, websites, journals, and transcripts of spoken language. When a lexicographer encounters a suspicious word, they can search the corpus for it. If a word like “dord” yields zero results in natural, historical use—apart from articles *about* it being a ghost word—it’s a strong sign that it never truly existed.
This data-driven approach allows editors to verify a word’s usage, track its changing meanings over time, and, most importantly, confirm that it is a living part of the language and not just a phantom born of error.
The tales of ghost words are more than just amusing linguistic trivia. They are a powerful reminder that our most authoritative sources are compiled by humans and are therefore fallible. They reveal the immense, painstaking labor that goes into creating a reliable dictionary and celebrate the scholarly detective work that keeps our language records accurate.
These lexical phantoms show us that a language is not just a static list of words in a book. It is a living, breathing, and sometimes messy entity. Dictionaries are not sacred texts handed down from on high, but rather living documents—histories of our communication that are constantly being written, revised, and, when necessary, exorcised of their ghosts.
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