Gaist

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A Scots word for a ghost, the spirit of a dead person believed to haunt the living
2. An old Scottish term for an apparition or the disembodied spirit of someone who has died
3. In Scots dialect, a supernatural presence or wraith, the soul of a deceased person returned to the earth

Etymology: "Gaist" is a Scots word for a ghost or spirit, and it is a close cousin of "ghost" rather than a separate invention. It descends from Old English "gast," which meant breath, spirit or soul, and that same root gave English "ghost" through a later spelling change that added an h and altered the vowel. Scots kept the older vowel and the older form, so "gast" and "gaist" survived in northern dialects while standard English settled on "ghost." The root is ancient and Germanic, linked to the idea of breath and moving air. Old English "gast" was used both for a living person's soul and for a departed spirit, so the notion that a ghost is essentially breath or life-force runs through the whole family of words. Old Norse "geisti" and Old High German "geist" come from the same source, and German "Geist" still means spirit or mind today. The Scots spelling "gaist" appears in Scottish writing from the medieval period onward, including in the poetry of Gavin Douglas and in later Scots literature. Its use as a plain noun for a spirit of the dead is one of several Scots terms that preserve an older English stage of the same word.