Entry · catalog no. 7419
catch the Holy Ghost
/ /ˌkætʃ ðə ˌhoʊli ˈɡoʊst/ /katch thuh HOH-lee GOHST
phrase · Black church, South and nationwide · 1900s
✓ Verified
1.
To be visibly overtaken by the Holy Spirit in worship — shouting, running the aisle, dancing, falling out. In the Black church this is not disorder; it is the service working. Catching it is involuntary and honorable: the Spirit chooses.
“First lady caught the Holy Ghost before the choir hit the second verse.”
Origin & Attribution
The Black worship tradition that runs from the ring shouts and hush harbors of slavery, through the sanctified church, into the Pentecostal explosion after the Azusa Street Revival (1906). The phrase names spirit possession as Black Christianity carried and remade it from West and Central African practice; Zora Neale Hurston documented the shout tradition in her Sanctified Church essays in the 1930s.
1800s
Ring shout and hush harbor worship under slavery
1906
Azusa Street Revival spreads the Pentecostal shout
1930s
Hurston documents the sanctified shout tradition
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
Black church, South and nationwide · 1900s
Spoken by
Black congregations — Baptist, Pentecostal, sanctified
$CATCHTThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady26 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
70/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Zora Neale Hurston, The Sanctified Church (essays)
1930s
■
+ Cite a sourceAzusa Street Revival, documented Pentecostal historiography
1906
See also