A Ghost Word for Halloween

Classified as a "rare" noun and attributed to the English poet Alexander Pope, phantomnation is defined in the 1864 edition of Webster's Dictionary as "Appearance as of a phantom; illusion." Well, it's an illusion all right. Phantomnation is a perfect example of a ghost word--a word that exists only in a dictionary and has never actually been used.

Most ghost words (dord and foupe, for instance) result from printing errors--but not phantomnation. The person responsible for contriving this illusion was a chap named Richard Paul Jodrell in a book innocently titled Philology on the English Language (1820). Another, less eccentric philologist (the editor of Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary) tells the story:

Mr. Jodrell evidently thought that a term made of two words, if joined at all, should be solidified into one continuous word. His work was made as supplementary to the other dictionaries of his time--to explain terms not given in them--and he gave such one-word forms as battlepainting, camelswallower, courtparasite, deepprojecting, fellowcandidate, foundlinghospital, islandempress, latelypurchased. marriagesettlement, promontoryshoulder, procurationmoney, pulpitsophistry, restlessrolling, stagegesture, tapestryhanging, and a great number of others just as odd.

This strange craze for solidifying had one curious effect well worth noting. In Pope's "Odyssey" there is a mention of "all the phantom nations of the dead." Jodrell gave as one of his words not theretofore explained phantomnation, with the definition, "A multitude of spectres." The later dictionaries have actually copied this, taking the form as if made of phantom and the suffix -ation, with -n- inserted for euphony!
(Francis Horace Teall, The Compounding of English Words, 1891)

Most of Jodrell's curious compounds left no lasting impressions on the language, but phantomnation clearly appealed to lexicographers. It can be found in a number of 19th-century dictionaries, including Ogilvie's Imperial Dictionary (largely a pirated version of Noah Webster's work) and Worcester's Dictionary (produced by Webster's chief rival, Joseph Emerson Worcester).

Even decades later, long after its dubious origin had been revealed, phantomnation continued to make a spectral appearance in reputable dictionaries. In the second edition of Merriam-Webster's New International Dictionary (1934), it's described as "a ghost word combining the words phantom and nation--erroneously defined as a formation with the suffix -ation."

Think about it: a ghost word defined in the dictionary as a ghost word. How's that for perpetuating an illusion--or, let's use it, a phantomnation. Why it's almost enough to make you start believing in ghosts.

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