Ghost net (was Language, Religion,and an information quest (or somesuch))

Mia Soderquist <tuozin@...> baccomunu:

> On a bit of a tangent, "ghost" would certainly be
> poetic, since there is another word for a deceased
> person, and the deceased are thought to be alive
> but no longer physical, and also omnipresent.
Funny you mention this.  On the commute home, I was wondering how "ghost"
might be phrased in Dublex.  I've phrased "soul, spirit" in the past as
'devbad', "divine body-part", and I tried compounds with that, but I didn't
have a ghost of a chance.  I think it might be 'mortperdaev',
"dead-person-god-diminutive", or 'malmortper', "pejorative dead person".
Thinking of "undead", maybe it would be 'miortper', "death-opposite-person".
You could populate a ghost town with all the forms I've rejected.  Or it
could be 'safarmort', "traveling death". I think the best might be
'mortdaev', "dead-god-diminutive".  I think I'll have to keep working on it.

The ghost story in English is interesting.  Many different senses of ghost
are at work:  a ghost crab is a white crab, a ghost net is a drifting
fishing net that kills dolphins and other marine life, a ghost town is an
abandoned town, a ghost story is a supernatural story and a ghost word is a
word created through error ('dord', anyone?).  Compounds seem to permit a
lot of metaphorical drift.

So what are your ghost words?  Literally and figuratively?

Regards,

Jeffrey