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Ghost vs Uncanny - What's the difference?

ghost | uncanny |

As a noun ghost

is the spirit; the soul of man.

As a verb ghost

is to haunt; to appear to in the form of an apparition.

As an adjective uncanny is

strange, and mysteriously unsettling (as if supernatural); weird.

ghost

English

Alternative forms

* ghoast (obsolete)

Noun

(en noun)
  • (rare) The spirit; the soul of man.
  • * Spenser
  • Then gives her grieved ghost thus to lament.
  • The disembodied soul; the soul or spirit of a deceased person; a spirit appearing after death; an apparition; a specter.
  • Everyone showed that the ghost of an old lady haunted this crypt.
  • *
  • The mighty ghosts of our great Harries rose.
  • * Coleridge
  • I thought that I had died in sleep/And was a blessed ghost .
  • *
  • Hepaticology, outside the temperate parts of the Northern Hemisphere, still lies deep in the shadow cast by that ultimate "closet taxonomist," Franz Stephani—a ghost whose shadow falls over us all.
  • Any faint shadowy semblance; an unsubstantial image; a phantom; a glimmering.
  • * Poe
  • Each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
  • * {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=May-June, author= William E. Conner
  • , title= An Acoustic Arms Race , volume=101, issue=3, page=206-7, magazine=(American Scientist) , passage=Earless ghost swift moths become “invisible” to echolocating bats by forming mating clusters close (less than half a meter) above vegetation and effectively blending into the clutter of echoes that the bat receives from the leaves and stems around them.}}
  • A false image formed in a telescope, camera, or other optical device by reflection from the surfaces of one or more lenses.
  • An unwanted image similar to and overlapping or adjacent to the main one on a television screen, caused by the transmitted image being received both directly and via reflection.
  • A ghostwriter.
  • (Internet) An unresponsive user on IRC, resulting from the user's client disconnecting without notifying the server.
  • (computing) An image of a file or hard disk.
  • (theater) An understudy.
  • (espionage) A covert (and deniable) agent.
  • The faint image that remains after an attempt to remove graffiti.
  • * 1992 , Maurice J. Whitford, Getting Rid of Graffiti (page 45)
  • Regardless of GRM used, graffiti ghosts persist. Protect cladding with surface coating or replace with graffiti resistant paint or laminate.
  • (video games) An opponent in a racing game that follows a previously recorded route, allowing players to compete against previous best times.
  • * 2012 , Keith Burgun, Game Design Theory: A New Philosophy for Understanding Games
  • This is also the case for some racing games (Super Mario Kart is a good example) that allow you to compete against your ghosts , which are precise recordings of your performance.
  • (label)
  • (label) the of
  • (label) perceived or listed but not
  • (label) of nature
  • (label)
  • Synonyms

    * (soul) soul, spirit * (spirit appearing after death) apparition, haint, phantom, revenant, specter/spectre, spook, wraith. * (faint shadowy semblance) glimmer, glimmering, glimpse, hint, inkling, spark, suggestion. * (false image in an optical device) * (false image on a television screen) : echo * (ghostwriter) ghostwriter * See also

    Derived terms

    * antighost * * ghost band * ghost bat * ghost bike * ghost catshark * ghost chili * ghost condensate * ghost crab * ghost dance * ghost detainee * ghosten * Ghost Festival * ghost flathead * ghost fleet * ghost frog * ghost fungus * ghost goal * ghost gum * ghost hunting * ghost imaging * ghost insect * ghost island * ghost knifefish * ghost light * ghost mark * ghost moth * ghost net * ghost note * ghost of a chance * ghost orchid * ghostly * ghost pepper * ghost ramp * ghost-riding * ghost runner * ghost ship * ghost shrimp * ghost sickness * ghost sign * ghost skate * ghost slug * ghost station * ghost story * ghost town * ghost train * ghost voting * ghost world * ghostwriter * give up the ghost * grey ghost * Holy Ghost

    See also

    * apparition * banshee * barghest * bogeyman * boggart * bogie * channelling * chimera * demon * doppelganger * draugr * duppy * ectoplasm * eidolon * exorcism * fantom * fetch * ghoul * haint * hallucination * haunt * illusion * incubus * lamia * larva * lemur * manes * mare * medium * mirage * necromancy * nightmare * phantasm * phantom * poltergeist * revenant * shade * shadow * specter * spectre * spirit * Spiritism * spook * sprite * soul * things that go bump in the night * vampire * visitant * wendigo * wight * will-o'-the-wisp * wraith * zombie

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (obsolete) To haunt; to appear to in the form of an apparition.
  • * 1606 , , Act II, sc. 6, l. 1221
  • since Julius Caesar, / Who at Philippi the good Brutus ghosted
  • (obsolete) To die; to expire.
  • (Sir Philip Sidney)
  • (ambitransitive) To ghostwrite.
  • (nautical) To sail seemingly without wind.
  • (computing) To copy a file or hard drive image.
  • (GUI) To gray out (a visual item) to indicate that it is unavailable.
  • * 1991 , Amiga User Interface Style Guide (page 76)
  • Whenever a menu or menu item is inappropriate or unavailable for selection, it should be ghosted . Never allow the user to select something that does nothing in response.
  • (internet) To forcibly disconnect an IRC user who is using one's reserved nickname.
  • * {{quote-news
  • , year=2011 , date=September 24 , author=David Ornstein , title=Arsenal 3 - 0 Bolton , work=BBC Sport citation , page= , passage=Arsenal came into the match under severe pressure and nerves were palpable early on as Pratley was brilliantly denied by Szczesny after ghosting in front of Kieran Gibbs}}

    Anagrams

    * (l), (l)

    uncanny

    English

    (uncanny)

    Adjective

    (er)
  • strange, and mysteriously unsettling (as if supernatural); weird
  • He bore an uncanny resemblance to the dead sailor.
  • Careless.
  • (rfc-sense) (psychology, psychoanalysis, Freud) Simultaneously familiar and foreign, often uncomfortably so; translation of Freud's usage of the German "unheimlich" (literally "unsecret").
  • * 2011 , Espen Dahl, Hans-Gunter Heimbrock, In Between: The Holy Beyond Modern Dichotomies , page 99:
  • [The uncanny is] something that was long familiar to the psyche and was estranged from it only through being repressed. The link with repression now illuminates Schelling?s definition of the uncanny as ‘something that should have remained hidden and has come into the open.’ (Freud: 2003, 147 f)
  • * 2003 , Nicholas Royle, The Uncanny , page 1 [http://books.google.com/books?id=XkvSWxjrMN8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=uncanny+freud&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0uSCUu_5JuqW2AXOkIGIBg&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=uncanny&f=false]:
  • The uncanny involves feelings of uncertainty, in particular regarding the reality of who one is and what is being experienced.
  • * 2011 , Anneleen Masschelein, The Unconcept: The Freudian Uncanny in Late-Twentieth-Century Theory , page 2 [http://books.google.com/books?id=9XgohiN3vOwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=uncanny+freud&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0uSCUu_5JuqW2AXOkIGIBg&ved=0CEIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=uncanny%20freud&f=false]:
  • Because the uncanny affects and haunts everything, it is in constant transformation and cannot be pinned down.
  • * 2001 , Diane Jonte-Pace, Speaking the Unspeakable , page 81 [http://books.google.com/books?id=GrtZ4fBOlTIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=uncanny+freud&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0uSCUu_5JuqW2AXOkIGIBg&ved=0CEgQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=uncanny&f=false]:
  • In the preceding chapter, we saw that Freud linked the maternal body, death, and the afterlife with the uncanny' in his famous essay "The ' Uncanny " ("Das Unheimliche").
  • * 1982 , Samuel Weber, The Legend of Freud , page 20 [http://books.google.com/books?id=mRwvpP1SiWEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=uncanny+freud&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0uSCUu_5JuqW2AXOkIGIBg&ved=0CE4Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=uncanny&f=false]:
  • This uncontrollable possibility—the possibility of a certain loss of control—can, perhaps, explain why the uncanny remains a marginal notion even within psychoanalysis itself.
  • * 2005 , Barbara Creed, Phallic Panic , page vii [http://books.google.com/books?id=3JrY_Pc4CFsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=uncanny+freud&hl=en&sa=X&ei=d-iCUrfWB4fu2AWAz4HoBA&ved=0CDUQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=uncanny%20freud&f=false]:
  • Freud argued that the uncanny' was particularly associated with feelings of horror aroused by the figure of the paternal castrator, neglecting the tropes of woman and animal as a source of the ' uncanny .
  • * 1994 , Sonu Shamdasani and Michael Münchow, Speculations after Freud , page 186 [http://books.google.com/books?id=e_P9tt2YF3oC&printsec=frontcover&dq=uncanny+freud&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aumCUoSzEITj2QX1roHYBA&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBTgo#v=onepage&q=uncanny&f=false]:
  • As is well known, Freud introduced the concept of the uncanny into psychoanalysis in 1919 and used The Sandman as a prime illustration for his definition.

    Antonyms

    * canny

    Derived terms

    * uncanny valley * uncannily