haunt
pronunciation
How to pronounce haunt in British English:
UK [hɔːnt]
How to pronounce haunt in American English:
US [hɔːnt]
-
- Noun:
- a frequently visited place
-
- Verb:
- follow stealthily or recur constantly and spontaneously to
- haunt like a ghost; pursue
- be a regular or frequent visitor to a certain place
Word Origin
- haunt
- haunt: [13] Etymologically, a ghost that haunts a building is only using the place as its ‘home’. The word’s distant ancestor is the prehistoric Germanic verb *khaimatjan, a derivative of the noun *khaimaz (source of English home). This was borrowed by Old French as hanter ‘frequent a place’, and passed on to English as haunt. Its main modern supernatural meaning did not develop until the 16th century (the first records of this sense come in Shakespeare’s plays).=> home
- haunt (v.)
- early 13c., "to practice habitually, busy oneself with, take part in," from Old French hanter "to frequent, resort to, be familiar with" (12c.), probably from Old Norse heimta "bring home," from Proto-Germanic *haimatjanan "to go or bring home," from *haimaz- "home" (see home (n.)). Meaning "to frequent (a place)" is c. 1300 in English. Use in reference to a spirit returning to the house where it had lived perhaps was in Proto-Germanic, but it was reinforced by Shakespeare's plays, and it is first recorded 1590 in "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
- haunt (n.)
- c. 1300, "place frequently visited," also in Middle English, "a habit, custom" (early 14c.), from haunt (v.) in its original sense of "to practice habitually." The meaning "spirit that haunts a place, ghost" is first recorded 1843, originally in stereotypical U.S. black speech, from the later meaning of the verb.
Example
- 1. Soaring commodities prices once again haunt the world economy .
- 2. A haunt for every unclean and hateful beast .
- 3. Or perhaps malthus 's ghost will come back to haunt us , even if not this halloween .
- 4. Fear and terror will always haunt me .
- 5. That decision would come back to haunt regulators .