gh in ghost

Albrecht Durer painted this watercolor
in 1494. A few years earlier, the letter h
had been added to the spelling of our
word ghost.

Our word ghost, started as gast. Gast was an Old English word which meant soul or spirit, the breath of life. Gast did not carry a meaning of whether the spirit was good or bad.

In the early 1400s, the scribes who wrote the notes and messages for the powerful people of that time, began inserting a letter h into gast.

The gh in ghost has nothing to do with the gh team we see in the knight, night, thought, caught word families.

The scribes of the early 1400's liked to appear to others to be extremely well educated. It made the scribes look smart and it gave them lots of power.

The printing press had not yet been invented. Everything was written and pictured by hand, usually by the hand of a scribe. In those days only a few people could sign their own names, most could not write anything at all.

Imagine a little scribe stuck in a boring monastery. This little scribe is looking through some ancient manuscripts. He sees the much, much older Indian word, gheis, and he understands that the Old English word gast must have come from gheis. Gheis had traveled with the traders from India to Greece, Rome, Germany, and Holland. And, to England. In its travels, gast had lost its h.

Think how smart this little scribe would look to the king and other powerful people if he started spelling gast with the ancient h of gheis. So, the little scribe changed our language for all time. He stuck an h into ghost.

How did the word ghost pick up the idea of something frightening? Old English and Old Gothic both had words which may have split off from gast; their word gaestan meant to be frightened.

Have fun with reading. Use my blog's search box - top left corner - put in silent gh and silent h and ce, ci, cy and working memory and high school reading, etc.

You may like to look at my books which teach a special comprehension method as well as all the tricky bits. I use ebay as my website. Search Instant Reading Help all my books will pop up for you. Being a powerful reader is more important than ever.
Thank you,  Mary Maisner