Word.ws English Dictionary

gastly

gastly is the obsolete spelling of ghastly.

Meaning of ghastly

Adjective

ghastly (comparative ghastlier, superlative ghastliest)

  1. Like a ghost in appearance; death-like; pale; pallid; dismal.
    • Each turned his face with a ghastly pang.1797–1798 (date written), [Samuel Taylor Coleridge], “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere”, in Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems, London: […] J[ohn] & A[rthur] Arch, […], published 1798, →OCLC
  2. Horrifyingly shocking.
    • Mangled with ghastly wounds through plate and mail.1667, John Milton, “Book VI”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished...
    Synonyms:
    lurid, grisly, gruesome
  3. (colloquial, dated) Extremely bad.
    • The play was simply ghastly.

See all 4 meanings of ghastly

Forms of gastly

Adjective
comparativemore gastly
superlativemost gastly
Adverb
comparativemore gastly
superlativemost gastly

Origin of gastly

From Middle English gastly, equivalent to gast (“to frighten”) + -ly (adjective-forming suffix).

From the adjective, equivalent to gast (“to frighten”) + -ly (adverb-forming suffix).

Questions about gastly

What is gastly the obsolete spelling of?
Gastly is the obsolete spelling of ghastly.

Words near gastly in the dictionary

  1. gastight
  2. gastightness
  3. Gastineau
  4. Gastineaus
  5. gasting
  6. gastly
  7. gastness
  8. gaston
  9. Gaston County
  10. gastoned
  11. Gastonia

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gastly (page history and authors); ghastly (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “gastly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gastly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.