errand-ghost

• errand ghost

Calque of Old English ǣrendgāst (“spiritual messenger, angel”), equivalent to errand +‎ ghost.

errand-ghost (plural errand-ghosts)

1. (rare, historical) A spirit or spiritual messenger; an angel.
   • 1900, Eleanor Vere Boyle, Seven gardens and a palace:

     Their simple directness of character may account for the well-nigh entire absence (as I said before) of all expression of religious hope. "God's Errand-Ghost," the Rider on the Pale Horse, has passed by that way, and one in the house — it may be the most loved of all, — is dead. There is no shirking of that bare truth, no attempt to soften it.

   • 2008, Letters To the Ghost In My House:

     If that was really insulting, please don't be offended. I certainly don't think of you as my errand-ghost. Actually, I think of you as my friend.

   • 2012, Yahoo! Canada Answers, Is Jesus God? Did Jesus ever claim to be God?:

     If Jesus were not God, He would have told lede to not worship Him, just as the errand-ghost in Bring to Lightings did.

2. (rare) Any spirit or ghostly messenger.
   • 2005, C. Jürschik y P. García, Interview with Jonathan Boakes:

     In regard of the previous question – do you also choose empty localizations deliberately? Is this to strengthen the fright for loneliness and silence, the same fright that the errand ghost of those haunted places feels?

   • 2011, Hugo Santander, Poems on America, the world, life and death:

     Death is not unknown to him, but she has perished / And her errand ghost wanders through the night.