GHOST WORDS

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GHOST WORDS

A ghost words is a nonexistent word that has made its way into a reference work by mistake. One well known example of a ghost word is the word Dord, which appeared in 1934 American dictionary defined as density, as it,is used in physics and chemistry. Dord was added to the dictionary when typesetter who was making entries into the dictionary misread the entry D or d and typed it as Dord. In relity, the letter d (or its capitalized version D) was used to refer to density in physics and chemistry. When the error was discovered, the ghost word Dord was removed from the dictionary.

Not all ghost words are recognized as errors, removed from reference works, and forgotten. One example of a well-established ghost word is the word syllabus. The Roman writer Cicero's had correctly used Latin word sittabus in his writings to refer to the title and author label on a manuscript. In a 1470 edition of Cicero's works, sittabus was miswritten as syllabus; the miswritten ghost word syllabus has now achived status as commonly used word referring to an outline of the contents of a course.