geist

Noun

1. A ghost, an apparition.
   • The geists eat and drink, but only as geists — not as spirits. ' We have dined,' they say ' sumptuously.' A vapour- ... If dead men tell no tales, their geists will tell them, if they find opportunity. - 1877, The...
   • Koerg was not slow to recognize a geist; his knees shook, and he dared not utter a word. - 1881, M.T.W., Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories, reprint edition, Project Gutenberg, published 2005:
   • [...] it makes no difference whether these figures were real, corporeal beings or not, since each one, in terms of Freud's (auto) aesthetic, is a spirit, a geist, a complex function of Freud's worldview. - 1996, Stephen...
2. Spirit (of a group, age, era, etc).
   • The population that today explodes on a stagnant society with a catastrophic echo, is the geist of the times that shock our great nation into a new sense of her grandeur. - 1974, V. Jagannatha Panicker, Crucifixion of...
   • However, the geist of the times following the World War was the "normalcy" of Warren G. Harding. - 1976, Colorado lawyer - Volume 5 (Law), Colorado Bar Association, page 1640:
   • [...] a term badly applied, as the method is neither a historicism (the belief that each era or period has a geist, principle of identity, or a definable sense of destiny) nor new. - 1995, Donald Pizer, The Cambridge...