Dictionary

errand-ghost en · NOUN

Etymology

Revived from Old English ǣrendgāst (“spiritual messenger, angel”). By surface analysis, errand + ghost.

Meanings

1. A spirit or spiritual messenger; an angel.
   • If Jesus were not God, He would have told lede to not worship Him, just as the errand-ghost in Bring to Lightings did. 2012, Yahoo! Canada Answers, Is Jesus God? Did Jesus ever claim to be God?:
   • Their simple directness of character may account for the well-nigh entire absence (as I said before) of all expression of religious hope. "God's Errand-Ghost," the Rider on the Pale Horse, has passed by that way, and one in the house — it may be the most loved of all, — is dead. There is no shirking of that bare truth, no attempt to soften it. 1900, Eleanor Vere Boyle, Seven gardens and a palace:
   • If that was really insulting, please don't be offended. I certainly don't think of you as my errand-ghost. Actually, I think of you as my friend. 2008, Letters To the Ghost In My House
2. (broadly) Any spirit or ghostly messenger.
   • The three errand-ghosts were all extremely ugly. […] The errand-ghosts then took the two souls back to Diling, deposited them at the wind-rain bridge leading into the village, and disappeared. 2021, Changzhen Li, 100 Cases of Reincarnation Among Dong People:
   • Death is not unknown to him, but she has perished / And her errand ghost wanders through the night. 2011, Hugo Santander, Poems on America, the world, life and death:
   • In regard of the previous question – do you also choose empty localizations deliberately? Is this to strengthen the fright for loneliness and silence, the same fright that the errand ghost of those haunted places feels? 2005, C. Jürschik y P. García, Interview with Jonathan Boakes:

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