ghost character
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.34 in modern English
25
Scrabble Score
14
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A character who is mentioned as appearing on stage, but does not do anything and seems to have no purpose.
noun
A kanji included erroneously in the JIS X 0208 character set (not traceable to the sources used to compile JIS X 0208).
Example Sentences
- "Beside this detailed information which Hall provides about Matthew Gough, Shakespeare's Gough is a ghost character. There is, indeed, no way in which an audience could pick up who he is when he appears only to be killed immediately."
- "A ‘ghost’ character is one who is marked as present on stage, but given no lines to speak: many editors consider the inclusion of these characters to be an oversight on the part of the writer or printer, and so remove them from modern stage directions; […]"
- "Joseph A. Porter's discussion of the ‘ghost character’ of Valentine in Romeo and Juliet is also illuminating: Porter describes Valentine as a ‘symptom or by-product of Mercutio's transformation’ from rival lover (in Shakespeare's source) to friend […]"