Ghost Words or nonexistent word

Ghost Words

A ghost word is a nonexistent word that has made its way into a reference work by mistake. One well-known example of a ghost word is the word "Dord", which appeared in a 1934 American dictionary defined as density, as it is used in physics and chemistry. " Dord" was added to the dictionary when a typesetter who was making entries into the dictionary misread the engtry " D or d" and typed it as "Dord". In reality the letter "d" was used to refer to density in phisics or chemistry. When the error was discovered, the ghost word "Dord" was removed from the dictionary. Not all ghost words are recognized as errors, removed from reference works, and forgotten. One example of awell- established ghost word is the word "syllabus". The Roman writer Cicero had correctly used the Latin word sittabus in his writing to refer to the title and author label on a manuscript. In 1470 edition of Cicero's works sittabus was miswritten as a " syllabus", the miswritten ghost word "syllabus" has now achieved status as a commonly used word reffering to an outline of the contentes of a course.