Other forms: poltergeists
A poltergeist is a spirit said to throw objects about, slam doors and move furniture. It is the noisy kind of haunting — the one with physical evidence rather than a figure at the end of the bed.
The word is German and keeps its German sound: POL-ter-guyst. It belongs to ghost stories, horror films and the occasional newspaper report, and it is used seriously by almost nobody, which gives it a slightly comic edge in ordinary speech. Note that the word describes the behaviour rather than the spirit's nature: a haunting is called a poltergeist case when things move, whatever anybody thinks is causing it.
1nounpoltergeistA spirit said to move objects about and make noise.
“The family claimed a poltergeist was throwing crockery.”
poltergeist is a kind of ghost.
German Poltergeist is poltern, to make a racket, plus Geist, a ghost — a noisy ghost, exactly. English borrowed it whole in the nineteenth century because it had no word of its own for the distinction between a ghost that appears and one that merely throws things.
German
Poltergeist
English, today
poltergeist
German Poltergeist, from poltern + Geist, cognates with boulder and ghost, respectively.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA