How ‘Ghost Words’ Made Their Way Into the Dictionary Due to Misspelling or Messy Handwriting

Dr. Erica Brozovsky of the PBS series Otherwords explained how certain words accidentally made their way into the dictionary due to typos, misspellings or messy handwriting. These words are known as “ghost words”.

Ghost  words are words that accidentally made their way into the dictionary without having a real usage  or meaning. Generally, they come to be because of typographical errors or maybe misreading  illegible handwriting. 

Examples of these ghost words include gravy and syllabus.

For instance, the word gravy is thought to be a 14th century cookbook  misreading which turned the old French grané into gravé. … Like gravy, syllabus is now a legitimate word. But according to the  second edition of the Oxford English dictionary,it originated from a misreading of the Greek word  sittubas, meaning parchment label or book title slip. If you’ve ever tried to read someone’s messy  handwriting, you can forgive that mistake