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ghoul

UK/ɡʉw(ə)l/US/ɡuːl/
nounC1Common in everyday speech and writing · #8,229 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: ghouls

A ghoul is a grave-haunting creature of eastern legend that feeds on the dead. An ancient ghoul, hunted by ghouls, the ghoul in the story.

It comes from Arabic folklore, where it is a shape-shifting desert demon, and English fiction has narrowed it to a corpse-eater in a graveyard. Figuratively, a ghoul is somebody with a morbid interest in death and disaster, which is where ghoulish comes from — ghoulish curiosity, ghoulish details. Note that ghoul is pronounced gool, and that ghoulish is far commoner in English than the creature itself.

R. Smirke, Esq., R.A. Digitized by Google Books. · Public domain

Definitions of ghoul

  1. 1nounghoulA grave-haunting creature of legend that feeds on the dead.C1

    “The ghoul in that story lives in a cemetery and complains about it.”

ghoul is a creature of legend.

Where it comes from

Arabic ghul comes from a verb meaning to seize. The word entered English in 1786 through a translation of the Arabian Nights, and it is one of the few Arabic words English took for a monster rather than for a science or a trade.

  1. Arabic

    غُول

  2. Persian

    غول

  3. French

    goule

  4. English, today

    ghoul

French goule, from Persian غول from Arabic غُول.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Myths & Legends, Fairy Tales & Folklore

Practise this word

ghoul in the wild

  • The film was followed by Scooby-Doo! and the Reluctant Werewolf in 1988, with the five girl ghouls making their return in the OK K.O.!

    Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School

  • Galland depicted the ghoul as a monstrous creature that dwelled in cemeteries, feasting upon corpses.

    Ghouls in popular culture

  • The story is set in an alternate version of Tokyo where humans coexist with ghouls, beings who look like humans but can only survive by eating human flesh.

    Tokyo Ghoul

  • Ken Kaneki is a college student who is transformed into a half-ghoul after an encounter with one of them.

    Tokyo Ghoul

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.