Changing Spelling Removes Word Associations

Take the word ghost, for example. Always having seen it speld in this way, we hav come to associate the feelings arousd by the idea ghost with its accustomd form of visual representation. To meet the word in our reading instantly and instinctivly excites those feelings in our minds. To meet the same word speld gost, shorn of its familiar h, shocks us, and causes a temporary mental inhibition of the idea. The word seems to hav lost, with the missing letter, something of the wierdness ...