hant

Noun

hant (plural hants)

1. (US, colloquial, chiefly African American Vernacular) A ghost; a supernatural being.
   • 1907, Harold Bell Wright, New York: A.L. Burt, The Shepherd of the Hills, Chapter I, p. 20,

     “ […] Say, Mister, did you ever see a hant?”

     The gentleman did not understand.

     “A hant, a ghost, some calls ’em,” explained Jed.

   • 1934, Cecile Hulse Matschat, Suwannee River: Strange Green Land, New York: The Literary Guild of America, Chapter Three, p. 52,

     […] he shivered as though a hant had touched him with its ghostly fingers, for night was near and he was alone in a depth of the swamp where he had never been before.

   • 1967, Richard M. Dorson, American Negro Folktales, Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett, “Spirits and Hants,” p. 213,

     The term “hant” covers all malevolent and inexplicable sights and sounds. Primarily hants protect buried treasure and linger about ghoulish death spots.

   • 1969, Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Bantam, 1971, Chapter 22, p. 140,

     Naturally, I believed in hants and ghosts and “thangs.” Having been raised by a super-religious Southern Negro grandmother, it would have been abnormal had I not been superstitious.

Contraction

hant

1. Eye dialect spelling of hadn’t.

Declension

Derived terms

• hantol

Inflection

This noun needs an inflection-table template.

Descendants

• Dutch: hand
• Limburgish: handj

Declension

Descendants

• Middle Dutch: hant
  • Dutch: hand
    • Afrikaans: hand

Declension

References

1. Köbler, Gerhard, Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, (6. Auflage) 2014