ghast
nounEtymology Poetic abbreviation of ghastly. Use as a noun influenced by ghost.
1
Fantasy An evil spirit or monster; a ghoul.
- The cliff-ghast wrenched off the fox's head, and fought his brothers for the entrails.2000, Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass:
- The most powerful of all undead creatures, ghasts feed on ghosts, dead souls and, most especially, live ones. They want to take over Iltior and set up a ghast empire.2007, Ian Irvine, Runcible Jones & the Buried City:
1 more example
- A malamanteau, or malapropistically used neologism that is also a portmanteau (yeah, isn't that a conceptual mouthful), the ghast was an incidental combination of ghost and ghastly […] As the post-interview continued, Carlos and I laughed as we recognized his malamanteau, what he chucklingly redescribed as a "ghastly ghost" […] "Ghast" is a neologism and portmanteau of ghost and ghastly that was used malapropistically. This, thus, constitutes a malamanteau.2022, James Joshua Coleman, “The Fabulous Rhetorics of Queer Inhumanity”, in Jacqueline Rhodes, Jonathan Alexander, editors, The Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric, New York: Routledge, →ISBN: