☼ Concept Map

''wraith'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260817195045-00-⌔

wraith - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

wraith (plural wraiths)

  • A ghost or specter, especially a person’s likeness seen just after their death.
    • ✤ Synonyms: see Thesaurus: ghost
    • ✤ We might indeed have been the wraiths of the departed dead upon the dead sea of that dying planet for all the sound or sign we made in passing.1
    • ✤ Like wraiths with the impediments of bodies they stumbled in the direction of Salthill faces.2

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle Scots wraith, first attested in 1513 in a translation of the Aeneid.345

The word has no certain etymology; it may be a transferred use of Middle Scots wraith, wrath (nominally “anger, rage”, adjectivally “angry, wrathful”), thus connecting it to writhe and making it a doublet of wrath and wroth.

The old Century Dictionary compares Old Norse vǫrðr (“guardian”).

Pronunciation

  • enPR: rāth, IPA: /ɹeɪθ/
  • Rhymes: -eɪθ
  • Audio (US): 🔊

Printed 2026-08-17.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1912 February–July, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Under the Moons of Mars”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as “Sola Tells Me Her Story”, in A Princess of Mars, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., October 1917, →OCLC, pages 159–160: ↩

  2. 2001, Joyce Carol Oates, Middle Age: A Romance, paperback edition, Fourth Estate, page 80: ↩

  3. Gawin Douglas, transl. (1513), chapter X, in Eneados, volume 10, lines 81–82: “Nor ȝit na vayn wrathys nor gaiſtis quent/Thi char conſtrenyt bakwart forto went ― Nor yet no vain wraiths nor quaint ghosts/constrained Thy chariot to go backward” ↩

  4. Gawin Douglas, transl. (1513), chapter XI, in Eneados, volume 10, lines 95–96: “Syklyke as that, thai ſay, in diuers placis/The wraithis walkis of goiſtis that ar ded ― Such as that, they say, in diverse places/The wraiths walk of ghosts that are dead” ↩

  5. Gawin Douglas, transl. (1513), chapter XI, in Eneados, volume 10, lines 129–130: “Thydder went this wrath or ſchaddo of Ene,/That ſemyt, all abaſyt, faſt to fle ― Thither went this wraith or shade of Ene,/That seemed, all abased, fast to flee” ↩