ghostwriter
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of ghostwriter
An Americanism dating back to 1895–1900
Explanation
Someone whose job involves drafting books, songs, or speeches that are credited to someone else is a ghostwriter. A movie star might pay a ghostwriter to pen her memoir, for example. If you don't want the bother of actually writing a book, but you like the idea of your name on its cover, you may want to hire a ghostwriter. Sometimes a ghostwriter gets credit for being a "researcher," but usually their name doesn't appear anywhere on the book, screenplay, or magazine article. Politicians sometimes employ ghostwriters to work on speeches, and celebrities routinely use ghostwriters to write "autobiographies."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Twisters star Glen Powell has made two films - a remake of 1980s sci-fi thriller The Running Man as well as JJ Abrams' Ghostwriter - in Glasgow in the past year.
From BBC • Aug. 3, 2025
Acquired by Microsoft in 2018 for $7.5 billion, GitHub dominates its market and is betting Copilot has the AI horsepower to fight off rival services including Tabnine, Amazon’s CodeWhisperer and Google-backed Replit Ghostwriter.
From Seattle Times • Apr. 22, 2024
Ghostwriter Kristin Loberg and many of her clients have apologized for misusing authors’ words without attribution.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 12, 2023
Instead, they'll all go to Ghostwriter, the anonymous creator behind it all, who's made a name for himself writing and creating similar AI-generated music.
From Salon • Sep. 7, 2023
Ghostwriter, Ubisoft’s A.I. dialogue tool, was a request by writers who faced the daunting and sometimes tedious task of filling open-world games with more than 100,000 lines of dialogue, the company said.
From New York Times • May 22, 2023
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
