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| A preta depicted during Kali Puja. |
Here's a word you likely have not heard before that means a "Wandering or disturbed ghost." (Thanks, Wikipedia)...
WORD: Preta [prey-tuh] noun
DEFINITION: 1. Hindu Mythology. a wandering or disturbed
ghost.
Citations for preta
It hurtled down upon
us, wanting to hurt us, as if we were horrid abominations it hungered to kill;
as if the cloud truly was a hungry ghost, a preta.
James Alan Gardner, Radiant, 2004
The boy's expression
was that of a preta, unburied at death.
Kim Stanley Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt, 2002
Origin of preta
In Sanskrit e is a long vowel (it is also transliterated as
ē). Hindi grammarians correctly analyzed e as a monophthong replacing an
earlier diphthong ai; thus the Sanskrit adjective preta “gone before, deceased”
is from an earlier form, praita, formed from the adverb and prefix pra- “forth”
and -ita “gone.” Pra- is cognate with the Latin prepositions prō and prae (and
prefixes pro- and prae-) and the Greek preposition pró (and prefix pro-), all
of them meaning “before, in front of.” The Sanskrit participle ita- corresponds
exactly in form with Latin itum, past participle of the verb īre “to go” and the
Greek verbal adjective itós “passable,” all from the Proto-Indo-European root
ei-, i- “to go.” Preta entered English in the early 19th century.
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