So THAT's Why There's An 'H' In Ghost

While we’re all feeling in a spooky kind of mood, word queen Susie Dent has reshared what she calls one of her ‘favourite’ stories: the history behind the spelling of the word ‘ghost’.So, it turns out that the ‘h’ in ghost... kind of shouldn’t be there. Describing the letter as a “historical hiccup”, Dent explained: “William Caxton, having first practised his trade in Flanders, brought Flemish typesetters back to England to help set up his printing press - they lobbed an ‘h’ into English ‘gost’ because their own native word was ‘gheest’”.The ‘h’ in ‘ghost‘ is a historical hiccup. William Caxton, having first practised his trade in Flanders, brought Flemish typesetters back to England to help set up his printing press - they lobbed an ‘h’ into English ‘gost’ because their own native word was ‘gheest’.— Susie Dent (@susie_dent) October 31, 2017In a later tweet, Dent clarified that the words ‘aghast’ and ‘ghastly’ were both in turn influenced by that ‘h’ and were actually ‘agast’ and ‘gas