Re: Soul of a dead person?

Matti Lamprhey wrote:

> Hi, Uli.  The odd word out is "spirit", which usually refers to the part

> of a person which survives death and goes to heaven, hell, purgatory, 
> etc.  The spirit is not itself usually held to be visible or otherwise 
> perceivable by the living.  You used the word "soul" in the subject 
> line, and this is a close synonym to "spirit" -- but not to the other 
> words.
> 
> The other words are close synonyms of each other, and only the first, 
> "ghost", is in normal usage nowadays.  These refer to the perception of 
> a dead person, usually in visible form.
>

"Ghost" is an archaic equivalent of "soul" or "spirit", as in the phrase 
"to give up the ghost", used (mostly) jocularly for to die. When the 
King James Bible was still in common use, the title used of the third 
member of the Trinity, the Holy Ghost, led to much misapprehension among 
schoolchildren. The meaning is now mostly confined to revenants.

JS