Gramer Girl here, I'm Manion Fuggedy and you can think of me as your friendly guide to

the English language.

Writing, History, Rules, and Cool Stuff.

Today in honor of Halloween, I have some cool stuff about ghost words.

In 1886, a lexicographer named Walter Skiet first used the phrase ghost words to describe

words that he said had no real existence.

In other words, ghost words are words that weren't real to begin with.

They made it into the dictionary because of an error or misunderstanding.

For example, it appears that gravy only became a word because of 14th century translator

Miss Red, a French cookbook.

In old French, the word was spelled with an N, G-R-A-N-E, also sometimes spelled G-R-A-I-N.

And it was related to the word grain, which according to the Oxford English Dictionary

meant anything used in cooking at the time.

But English cookbooks translated from French in the 14th century and later nearly always

have a V or a U instead of the N, leading to the word gravy that sounds so right to

us today.

Researchers believe it was simply a transcription error.

If the word had been transcribed properly, we'd be having grainy on our mashed potatoes

at Thanksgiving.

In the 15th century, a Miss print gave us another ghost word, syllabus.

The Roman philosopher Cicero died in 43 BC, but his work has been read ever since.

Two of his letters to Atticus have the word city bus with a Y or possibly Cidibus with

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