| / English Dictionary |
APPARITION
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
An act of appearing or becoming visible unexpectedly
Example:
natives were amazed at the apparition of this white stranger
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("apparition" is a kind of...):
appearance (the act of appearing in public view)
Derivation:
appear (come into sight or view)
appear (come into being or existence, or appear on the scene)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Something existing in perception only
Example:
a ghostly apparition at midnight
Synonyms:
apparition; fantasm; phantasm; phantasma; phantom; shadow
Classified under:
Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents
Hypernyms ("apparition" is a kind of...):
illusion; semblance (an erroneous mental representation)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "apparition"):
flying saucer; UFO; unidentified flying object (an (apparently) flying object whose nature is unknown; especially those considered to have extraterrestrial origins)
Flying Dutchman (a phantom ship that is said to appear in storms near the Cape of Good Hope)
ghost; shade; specter; spectre; spook; wraith (a mental representation of some haunting experience)
Sense 3
Meaning:
The appearance of a ghostlike figure
Example:
I was recalled to the present by the apparition of a frightening specter
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("apparition" is a kind of...):
appearance (the event of coming into sight)
Sense 4
Meaning:
A ghostly appearing figure
Example:
we were unprepared for the apparition that confronted us
Synonyms:
apparition; fantasm; phantasm; phantasma; phantom; specter; spectre
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("apparition" is a kind of...):
disembodied spirit; spirit (any incorporeal supernatural being that can become visible (or audible) to human beings)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "apparition"):
Flying Dutchman (the captain of a phantom ship (the Flying Dutchman) who was condemned to sail against the wind until Judgment Day)
Context examples:
It was a wailing child this night, and a laughing one the next: now it nestled close to me, and now it ran from me; but whatever mood the apparition evinced, whatever aspect it wore, it failed not for seven successive nights to meet me the moment I entered the land of slumber.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
What the waiter thought of such a strange little apparition coming in all alone, I don't know; but I can see him now, staring at me as I ate my dinner, and bringing up the other waiter to look.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Sallie began to laugh, but Meg nodded and lifted her eyebrows as high as they would go, which caused the apparition to vanish and put the sour bread into the oven without further delay.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
And for the moment the apparition of the gale rose before his eyes—a gale at night, with a clear sky and under a full moon, the huge seas glinting coldly in the moonlight.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Sometimes the peasants, scared by this horrid apparition, informed me of his path; sometimes he himself, who feared that if I lost all trace of him I should despair and die, left some mark to guide me.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
The door nearest me opened, and a servant came out,—a woman of between thirty and forty; a set, square-made figure, red-haired, and with a hard, plain face: any apparition less romantic or less ghostly could scarcely be conceived.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
He watched the youthful apparition of himself, day after day, hurrying from school to the Enquirer alley.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
His tale is connected and told with an appearance of the simplest truth, yet I own to you that the letters of Felix and Safie, which he showed me, and the apparition of the monster seen from our ship, brought to me a greater conviction of the truth of his narrative than his asseverations, however earnest and connected.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
I had my own reasons for being dismayed at this apparition; too well I remembered the perfidious hints given by Mrs. Reed about my disposition, &c.; the promise pledged by Mr. Brocklehurst to apprise Miss Temple and the teachers of my vicious nature.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
These visions came out of the actions and sensations of the past, out of things and events and books of yesterday and last week—a countless host of apparitions that, waking or sleeping, forever thronged his mind.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
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