Grama Girl here. I'm Minion Fogarty 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 a segment about weird words for ghosts. In honor of the many questions I've received,

I have a segment about the origin and use of the phrase quid pro quo. But first, if you listened

a couple of days ago, you know that I had the pleasure of interviewing Dave Itzkov, a New York Times

Culture reporter and author of Robin, a best-selling biography on Robin Williams. Dave researched Robin's

life, work, and upbringing for the biography. And in his new podcast, Dave teams up with Christy West

Guard to explore Robin Williams in a whole new light. The podcast is called Knowing Robin Williams.

You'll hear never before heard interviews from those who worked with Robin and knew him best,

like Tom Schulman, the screenwriter of Dead Poet Society, and Barry Levinson, the director of Good Morning

Vietnam. And you'll hear from comedians like Gilbert Godfried and Chris Getherd about how Robin

inspired them to push the boundaries of comedy. Listen for a moving portrait of an unforgettable

icon. Just search for Knowing, Colin, Robin Williams on your favorite podcast app.

Today is Halloween, the day many people celebrate all things spooky, spectral, and scary,

and what's scarier than a ghost. With that in mind, today we're going to talk about all the words

we use to describe ghosts. Let's start with one that's also a favorite movie from the 1980s

Poltergeist. This word was borrowed into English from German in the mid 1800s. It's a mashup

of the word polter, which means to make a loud noise or to rumble and thud, and the word

guist, which also means a ghost or spirit. In other words, a poltergeist is a really noisy ghost,

one that's often more interested in annoying its victims than hurting them. A related word is

zeitgeist. This refers to the unique flavor of a certain time like the counterculture mood of the 1960s.

The word is another mashup using guist, although here it refers more to a spirit than a ghost per se.

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