Word Nerd 2.5 – Ectoplasm
In the Book: The October Country by Ray Bradbury, page 261, from the short story “There Was an Old Woman”
In Context: “‘Tell you what. I’m settin’ here for the next two hunderd years. You listenin’? And every time any of your customers come by, I’ll spit ectoplasm right squirt up their nostrils!'”
In Their Words:
1: the outer relatively rigid granule-free layer of the cytoplasm usually held to be a gel reversibly convertible to a sol
2: a substance held to produce spirit materialization and telekinesis
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ectoplasm
Ectoplasm (from the Greek ektos, meaning “outside”, and plasma, meaning “something formed or molded”) is a term used in spiritualism to denote a substance or spiritual energy “exteriorized” by physical mediums.
In My Words: A made-up substance that either results from or enables psychic communication and interaction with ghosts.
In Pictures: