English

Verb

haint ‎(third-person singular simple present haints, present participle hainting, simple past and past participle hainted)

1. (US, dialectal) Alternative form of haunt
   • 1988, Randy Russell, Janet Barnett, Dead Dan's Shadow on the Wall, in Mountain Ghost Stories and Curious Tales of Western North Carolina, page 5,

     Looking from juror to juror and seeking out the smug faces of the witnesses who'd testified against him, he repeated his threat. "Those who say I kilt anybody are liars," he proclaimed. "And each of you will be hainted every day for the rest of your life. Then the devil will have ye."

   • 2003, Winson Hudson, Derrick Bell, Constance Curry, Mississippi Harmony: Memoirs of a Freedom Fighter, page 17,

     After he killed him, Ed came back and he didn't have no head and he hainted [haunted] Ole Master until he died himself — getting in his way all the time — Ole Ed would be right there with him.

   • 2003, W. Bruce Wingo, There Grows a Crooked Tree, page 92,

     “I just don't think it happened that way,” he argued. “Otherwise, the ghost wouldn't still be hainting the tree.”

Noun

haint ‎(plural haints)

1. (US, dialectal) Ghost.
   • 1960, Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, J. B. Lippincott Co., p. 254.

     "Ain't you scared of haints?"

   • 2005, "The Four-Legged Haint" by Eulie Rowan, in The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs, Simon and Schuster, p. 106:

     It didn't take long for word to spread that there was a "haint" in the graveyard. A haint is what the old-timers called a ghost.

   • 2009, Mary Monroe, God Still Don't Like Ugly, page 211,

     My dead grandpa's haint floated above my bed one night when I was a young'un and scared me so bad I busted the bedroom door down tryin' to get out that room so fast.

Etymology 2

Contraction

haint

1. (dialectal) Alternative form of ain't