wraith
/reɪθ
/noun
1A ghost or ghostlike image of someone, especially one seen shortly before or after their death.In keeping with the Batman myth established in the 30's comics, Wayne Senior is killed in a random street robbery, surviving only as a moral wraith tormenting the conscience of his orphaned son....
- The stage is designer Andy Klunder's evocation of a World War I blue remembered battlefield, peopled by a ghostly lost generation in sad tin hats and mouldy cloth, their women anonymous wraiths in caps and shrouds.
- I could almost see the wraith of our dear ‘Elder Brother’ hovering over them.
Synonyms
ghost, spectre, spirit, phantom, apparition, manifestation, vision, shadow, presence, poltergeist, supernatural being;
Scottish & Irish bodach;
West Indian duppy
informal spook
literary shade, visitant, revenant, phantasm, wight
rare eidolon, manes, lemures
1.1Used in reference to a pale, thin, or insubstantial person or thing: heart attacks had reduced his mother to a wraith...
- Her voice was tired, but she was starting to look like her usual self instead of the pale, thin wraith she had been.
- We who lived in the suburbs of towns that were themselves anonymous and mediocre were exiles from the city's Real: insubstantial wraiths, resigned to our status as non-beings.
- It's powerful, unsettling stuff, those thin wraiths marching off to war.
1.2 literary A wisp or faint trace of something: a sea breeze was sending a grey wraith of smoke up the slopes...
- But in the end it is fascinating, as Pilate's figure swirls before us, a wraith of smoke whose shape shifts with each new attempt to grasp it.
- Just a wraith of cloud over Rangitoto at 0615 and then a partial eclipse kicked in.
- I had never seen the rancher, who lived in the thrown-together compound of unmatched buildings down by the river, only a thin wraith of smoke coiling out of his chimney.
Derivatives
wraithlike
- She becomes daily more insubstantial, her figure wraithlike.
- Bausch and another female dancer move through a café setting with their eyes closed while a man, struggling to anticipate their wraithlike movements, hurriedly moves tables and chairs out of their way.
- When the lonely bagpipe finally plays a somber song for either entity, its wraithlike warble filling the air with all manner of mixed emotions, it will not be a celebration.
Origin
Early 16th century (originally Scots): of unknown origin.