wraith

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 31, 2026 is:

wraith • \RAYTH\  • noun

Wraith refers to the spirit of a dead person, or in other words, a ghost.

// The most frightening scene from the movie featured a vengeful wraith creeping slowly up behind the main characters.

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Examples:

"Nearly every storyteller knew the legend of the ghostly woman dressed in white, forever searching for her husband. ... Like all good desert legends, the facts shifted with the wind, but the ending was always the same: if you wandered too far into the dunes, you just might hear the wraith calling to her lost husband." — Candice McDonald, The Alamogordo (New Mexico) Daily News, 30 July 2026

Did you know?

If you see your own double, you're in trouble, at least if you believe old superstitions. The belief that a ghostly twin's appearance portends death is one common to many cultures. In German folklore, such an apparition is called a Doppelgänger (literally, "double goer"); in Scottish lore, it is a wraith. The exact origin of the word wraith is misty, however, and etymologists can only trace it back to the early 16th century—in particular to a 1513 translation of Virgil's Aeneid by Gavin Douglas (the Scotsman used wraith to name apparitions of both the dead and the living). Today, wraith may refer broadly to ghost or specter, or figuratively to something regarded as ghostly or insubstantial, as when New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane referred to an actor's "wraith of a mustache."