Phantom

How to spell phantom

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce phantom

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does phantom mean?

1. nounA ghost or apparition; something perceived but having no physical reality.
2. adjectiveExisting only in appearance or imagination; not real or genuine.

Phantom in a sentence

• noun

  The old hotel is said to be haunted by a phantom that drifts through the corridors.

• adjective

  The auditors found a phantom employee on the payroll who had never actually worked there.

• noun

  After the surgery he felt a phantom ache where his leg used to be.

• adjective

  Investors lost money chasing phantom profits that the company had never earned.

Where does phantom come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek phantasma, meaning 'an apparition' or 'a thing that appears', which was built on the verb phainein, 'to show' or 'to bring to light'. From Greek it passed into Latin as phantasma and then softened in Old French to fantosme, the spelling that English first adopted in the 1200s. The silent 'ph' spelling, pronounced like an 'f', is the giveaway of its Greek pedigree, the same 'ph' you see in physics and philosophy. Over the centuries the sense broadened from a literal ghost to anything seemingly real but actually absent, such as phantom pain or a phantom limb. The closely related word fantasy shares exactly the same root, which is why both circle around things that are imagined rather than solid.

How the word is built

• phant- (from Greek phantazein/phainein: to make visible, to show)
• -om (noun ending, via French fantosme)