spirit
Meanings
noun
- The soul of a person or other creature.
- A supernatural being, often but not exclusively without physical form; ghost, fairy, angel.
- A feeling of passion.
- Enthusiasm.
- Energy; ardour.
- The manner or style of something.
- Intent; real meaning; opposed to the letter, or formal statement.
- A volatile liquid, such as alcohol. The plural form spirits is a generic term for distilled alcoholic beverages.
- One who is vivacious or lively; one who evinces great activity or peculiar characteristics of mind or temper.
- Temper or disposition of mind; mental condition or disposition; intellectual or moral state.
- Air set in motion by breathing; breath; hence, sometimes, life itself.
- A rough breathing; an aspirate, such as the letter h; also, a mark denoting aspiration.
verb
- To carry off, especially in haste, secrecy, or mystery.
- Sometimes followed by up: to animate with vigour; to excite; to encourage; to inspirit.
name
- Ellipsis of Holy Spirit.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *(s)peys-der.? Latin spīrō Proto-Indo-European *-tus Proto-Italic *-tus Latin -tus Latin spīritus Old French espiritbor. Middle English spirit English spirit From Middle English spirit, from Old French espirit (“spirit”), from Latin spīritus (“breath; spirit”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)peys- (“to blow, breathe”). Compare inspire, respire, transpire, all ultimately from Latin spīrō (“to breathe, blow, respire”). In this sense, displaced native Middle English gast (from Old English gāst), whence modern English ghost. Doublet of spiritus, spirytus, sprite, spright, and esprit.
Synonyms
Related words
Derived words
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.