Lexicon ·
caspering
noun, also verb (to casper)
- Stated meaning
- Letting someone down gently and honestly, instead of disappearing.
- Operating meaning
- An ending issued in writing, with a reason and a courtesy attached, on a date chosen by the party who is leaving.
- Origin
- A headline in IBTimes UK in February 2018, after the friendly cartoon ghost, offered as the alternative to ghosting. Marie Claire Australia credited the coinage to the paper a week later.
IBTimes UK (opens in a new window) ran the word on February 13, 2018, in a headline, “Caspering: What to do instead of ghosting someone,” and left it undefined in the text. The photo caption supplied the meaning: “Caspering involves letting down a date gently.” The article closed on an instruction, “casper, don’t ghost.” A week later Marie Claire Australia (opens in a new window) credited the coinage to the paper and called it “a friendly version of ‘ghosting’.”
The word arrived as conduct to adopt, which is rare in its genus. Ghosting, zombieing, orbiting and the rest name a way of leaving that the reader is assumed to have suffered. Caspering names a way of leaving that the reader is assumed to perform, and its name is still taken from a ghost.
Under load, caspering is ghosting with a receipt. The departing party still leaves, on their own schedule, and adds a sentence that closes the account in writing. The sentence costs the sender a minute and spares the recipient the work of reading a silence. It also lets the sender file the ending as considerate, which the record of a ghosting never allows. Both parties receive closure, and one of them chose its date.