geist

plural geists

1. A ghost, an apparition.

   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

   2 more examples

   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 spiritual magazine

   [...] 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 Barker, Excavations and Their Objects

2. Spirit (of a group, age, era, etc).

   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

   3 more examples

   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 the Unborn: Underpopulated India, Digitized edition, Sivaji Publications, published 2008, page 54

   [...] 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 Companion to American Realism and Naturalism

   ... particular 'culture areas' of the world are dominated by their own peculiar geist or 'cultural soul' ...

   2009 October 13, Adam Curtis, Lee Ravitz (comment), “Kabul: City Number One - Part 3”, in BBC

plural Geists

1. A surname from German.