How ‘Ghost Words’ Made Their Way Into the Dictionary Due to Misspelling or Messy HandwritingDr. Erica Brozovsky of the PBS series Otherwords explained how certain words accidentally made their way into the dictionary due to typos, misspellings or messy handwriting. These words are known as “ghost words”. Ghost words are words that accidentally made their way into the dictionary without having a real usage or meaning. Examples of these ghost words include gravy and syllabus. If you’ve ever tried to read someone’s messy handwriting, you can forgive that mistake