Other forms: wraiths
A wraith is a pale ghostly figure, and in Scottish folklore specifically the apparition of a person seen shortly before or after their death. A wraith at the window, thin as a wraith.
It is a literary word and rare outside ghost stories and fantasy, where it usually means a thin insubstantial spirit. The adjective wraithlike is used of very thin, pale people and of mist. Note the specific folklore meaning, which is stronger than ghost: seeing somebody's wraith was a warning, not a haunting. And Rolls-Royce named a car the Wraith, which is a curious choice nobody has ever quite explained.
1nounwraithA pale ghostly figure.
“A wraith is said to walk the shore on that one night.”
2nounapparitionThe apparition of somebody seen near the time of their death.
“In the story his wraith appears to his sister the same hour.”
wraith is a ghostly figure.
The word first appears in sixteenth-century Scots and its origin is genuinely unknown — one of a small number of English words with no traceable ancestry at all. That suits it.
gmw-msc
wraith
English, today
wraith
Built from
gmw-msc wraith, first attested in 1513 in a translation of the Aeneid. The word has unknown; it may be a transferred use of gmw-msc wraith, wrath, thus connecting it to writhe and making it a a doublet of wrath and wroth. The old Century Dictionary compares Old Norse vǫrðr (“guardian”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Myths & Legends, Fairy Tales & Folklore