Halloween parties give even the most timid wallflower a chance to put on a new persona and become the life of the party. Between the “Monster Mash” and the costume contests lies the art of good (spooky) conversation. Brush up on these chilling words and their histories so you can impress the witches, zombies, and superheroes alike with your knowledge of the language of Halloween.

The verb “haunt” might call to mind a crumbling mansion with ghosts and evil spirits wandering cobwebbed hallways. But for centuries, “haunt” was more neutral, and implied just visiting a place often. Around the 1500s, the ghostly connotation crept in, and “haunt” began to reference distress and harm. A nice walk through a haunted house on Halloween is just what the mad scientist ordered.

The word “ghost” has been in use for at least a thousand years, and as a noun it originally referred to someone’s vital spark or intelligence. Eventually the usage morphed into the souls of the dead. The Old English spelling was both gost and gast (the root of “ghastly”), but it turned into “ghost” by the end of the 16th century. This was also when the usage as a spiritual soul of someone, distinct from the physical nature, came into use. The usage of “ghost” to mean “an apparition, a spectre, a phantom, often haunting a specific location” has been in use since at least the 12th century, but it was not the primary usage until a few centuries ago.

The most modern usage of “ghosting” refers to disappearing from someone’s life (usually romantic relationships) without a trace, but the word has been used as a verb for centuries. In the 17th century, Shakespeare used “ghosted” in Julius Caesar to describe Brutus hanging around a location. Another usage, going back to the 17th century, uses “ghost” to refer to someone being an annoying presence. A more modern usage refers to smooth, gliding movement, perhaps in the manner of a ghost. A 2020 Guardian article referenced an athlete as such: “He dribbled past five England players before ghosting away from Shilton.”

If you spot a specter draped in a sheet at your Halloween party, charm them with your etymological knowledge of this ancient term.

The myth of the bloodthirsty undead preying on the living dates back to ancient Greece, meaning it’s older than the word to refer to the aforementioned undead, “vampire.” The original name of the creepy creature came from Eastern Europe, where Serbian stories about the vampir were popular in the early 18th century. “Vampire” was popularized in English through late 19th-century Gothic novels (Dracula by Bram Stoker was published in 1897) and has been sucking our blood ever since. The “vampire” bat moniker was given to a species of South American bloodsucking bat by a biologist in 1774, and the term “vamp,” referring to a seductive woman, was coined in the early 20th century.

Originally a Gaelic word meaning “woman of the fairyland,” this fanciful term acquired a dark turn through its lore. In legends, banshees are the spirits of women who scream outside the windows of doomed households. If you heard one wail, you would know someone in your home would die before daybreak.

Over the centuries, “goblin” has come to represent a creature more mischievous than monstrous. The word comes either from the Greek kobalos, which is a mischievous sprite, or the German Kobold, which is a spirit that haunts houses and lives underground in caves or mines. The goblin representation in myths and literature exists anywhere on the scale from playful and full of pranks, to ugly yet harmless, to menacingly evil.

Meaning “a visible disembodied spirit,” the word “specter” is rooted in the Latin spectrum, which means “image or apparition.” The verb form is specere, which means “to look.” Many English words pertaining to appearance have come from the same verb: “spectacle,” “inspect,” and “conspicuous,” to name a few. Specters can also be ghostly, fearsome visions conjured by the imagination. Or are those just Halloween decorations?

Historically, a wraith is the replica of a living person appearing as a specter to foreshadow something bad, like that person’s death. (The wraith might also appear directly after someone’s death.) An old synonym for the ghostly appearance of a living person is “doppelgänger,” but now this German loanword is more commonly used for someone who looks exactly like another individual. Perhaps you’ll find your doppelgänger at a party if you dress up as Carmy from The Bear or the witch Agatha Harkness.

Although it shares letters with the Old English words ghost and ghastly, “ghoul” didn’t enter the language until the 1700s. The word was introduced to the West by the translation of One Thousand and One Nights (sometimes known as Arabian Nights) into French. In the book, the Arabic word ġūl was used to describe an evil being who robbed graves and ate corpses.

It’s the time of year when doorsteps are decorated with jack-o’-lanterns and spiderwebs, and shopping carts fill with candy in preparation for trick-or-treaters. While American children and adults embrace the modern Halloween spirit, the roots of ghostly words come from cultures around the world. Get into the Halloween spirit with these spooktacular words.

Ghosts go by many names. In English, “phantasm” means “a figment of the imagination,” but in Spanish, fantasma refers to a ghost, and in Haitian-Creole, the spooky figure is a fantom. Maybe they’re all figments of the imagination, but they’re easy to find in fictional stories. Ghosts can be portrayed as kind as Casper, or as more malevolent. In Germany, a Poltergeist will make a noisy entrance by moving objects around a room; in Northern England, the boisterous creatures are called “boggarts.”

The word “zombie” has a few possible origins: Jumbie is the West Indian word for “ghost,” and Nzambi is the supreme deity (and ruler of death) in Kongo spirituality. The Haitian-Creole dialect also has zombi, which has roots in Haitian vodou folklore. Unlike in modern zombie stories, which often employ technology or a virus to create the undead, a bokor (a sorcerer) could create a zombie by controlling an individual’s spirit. (They were actually anesthetizing and paralyzing people through animal- and plant-derived neurotoxins.) While the word “zombie” may come from distinct cultures, it was the 1968 movie Night of the Living Dead that popularized the modern idea of an undead creature who moves robotically and seeks human flesh.

For other creatures of the night, multiple languages use similar words to identify them. Both Hungarian and German use vampir/Vampir to describe bloodsucking monsters, and the French use vampyre. And while many languages have versions of “werewolf”(or werwolf), Spanish-speaking countries know these creatures as hombre-lobos. Portuguese speakers call them lobisomem.

Cryptids, or creatures that science hasn’t been able to prove exist, go by many different names around the world. Perhaps the most famous example is the Scottish “Nessie,” the Loch Ness monster. Said to resemble a dinosaur with a long neck, it supposedly has flippers and can breathe underwater. Written references and supposed Nessie sightings date back to the seventh century. But Scotland isn’t the only country to have a lake monster legend. Argentina has Nahuelito, supposedlyliving in the Patagonian Mountains, with the same features as Nessie, down to the long neck.

Legends talk of cryptids on dry land. Bigfoot (also known as Sasquatchin Canada and the yetiin the Himalayas) is described as at least 8 feet tall and covered in hair — possibly half man, half ape.

Then there are regionally specific cryptids, such as the Jersey Devil,which comes from colonial New Jersey lore. Described as having horse hooves and the wings of a bat, the Jersey Devil popped up in stories when Deborah Leeds gave birth to her 13th child in the early 1700s and claimed that the baby was a child of the devil. Since then, countless New Jerseyans swear they’ve spotted the creature across the state.

Whether scientists back up the folklore or not, Halloween will likely bring many ghosts, zombies, werewolves, and Bigfoots to your doorstep — if only for trick-or-treating.

If almost any millennial hears the word “someBODY…” blaring from a speaker, they can finish the first line of Smash Mouth’s 1999 hit song “All Star”: “Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me / I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed.” But what would happen to the song if it started with “someone” instead of “somebody”? The two words have virtually the same meaning and are often used interchangeably. However, “All Star” would not be the same if you changed that first word.

“Someone” is considered the more formal of the two, so it’s preferred in legal and academic writing. This may be one of those language rules you’ve followed without noticing, but give it a try now. The use of “one” as a pronoun is very formal: “One may find that using ‘someone’ is more appropriate in professional settings.”

“Someone” and “somebody” are indefinite pronouns, meaning they refer to a nonspecific or unidentified person. Both should be written as single words — the two-word variants “some one” and “some body” went out of style around the early 19th century. Other indefinite pronouns include “anyone”/”anybody” and “everyone”/”everybody.” As with “someone,” the words “anyone” and “everyone” are also preferred in formal writing.

While “someone” is more formal, “somebody” can be more important. Comedian Lily Tomlin said, “I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.” Here, the use of “somebody” is more specific — it’s used as a noun instead of as an indefinite pronoun. Tomlin was joking that she may have become famous, but she should have specified the type of fame, and her quote illustrates when we might want to choose “somebody” over “someone.” This slight grammatical shift drastically changes the meaning of the word. Instead of an unnamed person, now “somebody” refers to a person of particular importance, fame, or power.