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Ghoul   /gul/   Listen
Ghoul

noun
(Written also ghole)
1.
Someone who takes bodies from graves and sells them for anatomical dissection.  Synonyms: body snatcher, graverobber.
2.
An evil spirit or ghost.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Ghoul" Quotes from Famous Books



... eats a grain of rice, like Amina in the "Arabian Nights," is absurd and unnatural; but there is a modus in rebus: there is no reason why she should be a ghoul, a monster, an ogress, a ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... by me, full of anxious and affectionate enquiry, and smoothed the coverlet with her great felonious hand, I could quite comprehend the dreadful feeling with which the deceived husband in the 'Arabian Nights' met his ghoul wife, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... ghoul or not, there was something the huge beast seemed afraid of and hurried to get away from, or attempted to frighten ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... ancestor of Nathanael Hawthorne should have been a party to it, holds a suggestion of the tendencies which in the novelist's case, gave him that interest in the sombre side of life, and the relish for the somewhat ghoul-like details, on which he lingered with a fascination his readers are compelled to share. On an old paper still owned by a gentleman of Salem, one may read this catastrophe which has, in spite of court ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... Nature, Bard Supreme, To fashion kings and lordlings fit to rule; They would be flesh and blood, not fiend and ghoul; And would thou wert her Sun, that every beam Might not, for tally, show a youth's blood-pool, Choking blithe Spring, as, now, ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle

... faced his fate. He could not lock the door. Either he must stay or go back with the haunting conviction that this hungry-eyed old fiend who could strum with diabolic skill upon the sensitive strings of his very soul, would propel himself in his wheel-chair to the stairway, there to sit like a ghoul at the top. Rain beat in Kenny's ears like a trumpet of doom. He felt sick and dizzy. No! with the memory of that last wonderful moment when the music had blended into the fire of his tenderness, he could not go back. Invisible, Adam ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... and sometimes the animals were even painted. Skulls of sheep and cattle, and even of human beings were often carried on the saddlebows to add another element of terror. A framework was sometimes made to fit the shoulders of a Ghoul which caused him to appear twelve feet high. A skeleton wooden hand at the end of a stick served to greet terrified Negroes at midnight. For safety every man carried a small whistle and a brace ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... beheld in terror and surprise This gruesome shape which mocked before his eyes He could distinguish in its haughty mien A bearing, something as his own had been; Nor had its withered visage quite the look Of vampire, ghoul or evanescent spook; And as the apparition o'er him bent, He saw that every seam or lineament, Contour of feature, prominence of bone, Bore all a striking ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... friend, as well as the noble Marquis of Carabas? At night, when all the house is asleep but you, don't you get up and peep into yours? When you in your turn are slumbering, up gets Mrs. Brown from your side, steals downstairs like Amina to her ghoul, clicks open the secret door, and looks into her dark depository. Did she tell you of that little affair with Smith long before she knew you? Psha! who knows any one save himself alone? Who, in showing his house to the closest and dearest, doesn't keep back the key of a closet or two? ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... voice as he soared to the sky Was that of a ghoul with the grumbles. His teeth were so hot, and his tongue was so dry, That his shout seemed us raucous as though one should try To play on a big drum ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various

... with a vacant stare, and then suddenly burst out, waving his arms: "A fiend!" he cried. "A ghoul from the pit! A vampire soul behind a lovely face! Now, God forgive me!" he went on in a lower tone, turning his face to the wall; "I have said more than I should. I have loved her too much to speak of her as she is. I love her too ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... children began to shun me as a pest. Often, when I was creeping upon them like a melancholy ghoul, I would hear them say to each other: "Here comes papa," and they would gather their toys and scurry away to some safer hiding place. Miserable wretch ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry

... throw out on either hand From that well-ordered road we tread, And all the world is wild and strange; Churel and ghoul and Djinn and sprite Shall bear us company to-night, For we have reached the Oldest Land Wherein ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... yelled into his ear, awoke him. Ta-inga-ro gave him drink from time to time, but never food, and so they rode for days. At last hunger overbore his loathing, and sinking his teeth into the dead flesh before him he feasted like a ghoul. ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... arose, and with Cleve half supporting her she backed off the road to a seat on the bank. She saw the bandits now at business-like action. Blicky and Smith were cutting the horses out of their harness: Beady Jones, like a ghoul, searched the dead men; the three bandits whom Joan knew only by sight were making up a pack; Budd was standing beside the stage with his, expectant grin; and Gulden, with the agility of the gorilla he resembled, was clambering over the top of the stage. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... pervaded with the sickening odour of the grave. At each end, squatted or lying prone on their respective mats or mattresses, were the yet breathing corpses of lepers in the last stages of various forms of the disease, who glanced inquisitively at us for a moment out of their ghoul-like eyes—those who were not already beyond seeing—and then withdrew within their dreadful selves. Was there ever a ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... that strange feelings creep over one in reading their stories at the witching hour, when the fire is nearly out, and the candle-wicks are an inch and a half long. The Frenchman seldom introduces a ghost—never a ghoul; but he makes up for it by describing human beings with sentiments which would probably make the ghoul feel ashamed to associate with them. The utmost extent of human profligacy is depicted, but still the profligacy is human; it is only ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... had taken their place. Huge, black birds circled over the forest island. Gaunt, dusky forms sat ghoul-like on the stick platforms that had been nests filled with impatient, squealing young birds, or flapped heavily and ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... had died away. The fourth man poked among the packs. There was little to see except gleaming teeth and the whites of eyes, set in hairy faces in the mist. But Ismail danced all by himself among the stones of Khyber road and he looked like a bearded ghoul out ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... brute to thrive and to grow, its abominable famine gorged from the store of that in him which he felt to be the purest, the cleanest, and the best, its bulk fattened upon the rot and the decay of all that was good, growing larger day by day, noisome, swollen, poddy, a filthy inordinate ghoul, gorged and bloated by feeding on the good things that ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... shoulders burden,—blast his life! Or palsy those dear hands that work for thee, And fill his eyes with tears of agony, Till love shall turn as acid to his teeth, And thorns shall tear his side with hellish wreath, And daggers pierce his heart, and ice his soul, And thou become to him a hated ghoul! ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... good—would do you Best—and if Samoa didn't do, you needn't stay beyond the month, and I should have had another pleasure in my life, which is a serious consideration for me. I take this as the hand of the Lord preparing your way to Vailima—in the desert, certainly—in the desert of Cough and by the ghoul-haunted woodland of Fever—but whither that way points there can be no question—and there will be a meeting of the twa Hoasting Scots Makers in spite of fate, fortune ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... too, as can be told by their earnest speechifying, and the gesticulation that accompanies it. Without comprehending a word that is said, Seagriff knows too well what they are talking about; their gestures are too intelligible with the lurid glare in their ghoul-like eyes. All that he sees portends a danger that he shrinks from declaring to his companions. They will doubtless learn ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid

... has, the moment he awakes, a hatred of his dream, and a great desire to be free of the dream, free of the persistent mother-image or sister-image of the dream. It is a ghoul, it haunts his dreams, this image, with its hateful conclusions. And yet he cannot get free. As long as a man lives he may, in his dreams of passion or conflict, be haunted by the mother-image or sister-image, even when he knows that the cause of the disturbing dream is the wife. But ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... escape lightly. Talpers's attitude was a menace until, through a fortunate set of circumstances, we managed to secure a compensating hold over him. Undoubtedly Talpers had been first on the scene after the murder. He had robbed my brother's body, and was caught in his ghoul-like act by his partner, Jim McFann. The half-breed believed Talpers when the trader told him that a watch was all he had found on the dead man. The later discovery that Talpers had deceived him, and had really taken a large sum of money from the body, led the half-breed ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman

... rather than carry out the orders of Government? Burley's character for ruthlessness is defended by the evidence of the "Scottish Worthies." As Dr. McCrie objects to his "buffoonery," it is odd that he palliates the "strong propensity" of Knox "to indulge his vein of humour," when describing, with ghoul-like mirth, the festive circumstances of the murder and burial of Cardinal Beaton. The odious part of his satire, Scott says, is confined to "the fierce and unreasonable set of extra-Presbyterians," Wodrow's High Flyers. "We have no delight to dwell either upon ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... long known. And the people—ah, the people— Though as high as a church steeple They have gone For fresh air, that Demon's tolling In a muffled monotone Their doom, and rolling, rolling O'er the City overgrown. He is neither man nor woman, He is neither brute nor human, He's a Ghoul; Spectre King of Smells, he tolls, And he rolls, rolls, rolls. Rolls, With his cohort of Bad Smells! And his cruel bosom swells With the triumph of the Smells. Whose long tale the scribbler tells To the Times, Times, Times, Telling of "local" crimes In the gendering of the Smells, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various



Words linked to "Ghoul" :   stealer, evil spirit, graverobber, thief



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