An American dialectal form of 'haunt' or 'haint,' meaning a ghost or spirit, used in rural Southern and Appalachian speech. The spelling reflects a regional pronunciation where the vowel is shifted and the 't' is retained. 'Harnt' carries the same folk-horror connotation as 'haint' — a spirit that lingers, usually associated with someone who died under troubling circumstances. It's the kind of word that appears in ghost stories, folk tales, and dialect literature of the American South.
Old folks around here say the barn's been haunted ever since the fire — every child in the county knew about the harnt that lived there.
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(US, dialect) , ghost.
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Regional slang from around the English-speaking world — British, Australian, Irish, Caribbean, Nigerian, Filipino, AAVE, and the hyphenated-English dialects that make the internet sound local.
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