Word.ws English Dictionary

ghast

/ɡæst/

ghast is the alternative form of gast.

Meaning of gast

Verb

gast (third-person singular simple present gasts, present participle gasting, simple past and past participle gasted)

  1. (obsolete) To frighten.
    • [H]ee charges home my vnprouided body, lancht mine arme, but when he ſaw my beſt alarumd ſpirits, bould in the quarrels, rights, rouſd to the encounter, or whether gaſted by the noyſe I made, but ſodainly he fled.c. 1603–1606 (date written), [William Shakespeare], […] His True Chronicle Historie of the Life and Death of King Lear and His Three Daughters. […] (First Quarto), London: […] Nathaniel Butter, […]...

See all 2 meanings of gast

Adjective

ghast (comparative more ghast, superlative most ghast)

  1. Having a ghastly appearance; weird.

Noun

ghast (plural ghasts)

  1. An evil spirit or monster; a ghoul.
    • The cliff-ghast wrenched off the fox's head, and fought his brothers for the entrails.2000, Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass
    • The most powerful of all undead creatures, ghasts feed on ghosts, dead souls and, most especially, live ones. They want to take over Iltior and set up a ghast empire.2007, Ian Irvine, Runcible Jones & the Buried City

Forms of ghast

Verb
third-person singular presentghasts
present participleghasting
past participleghasted
pastghasted
Adjective
comparativemore ghast
superlativemost ghast
Noun
pluralghasts

Origin of ghast

Variation of gast, from Middle English gasten, from Old English gāstan (“to meditate”) and gǣstan (“to gast, frighten, afflict, torment”). More at gast. Spelling influenced by ghost.

Poetic abbreviation of ghastly. Use as a noun influenced by ghost.

Words formed from ghast

Questions about ghast

What does ghast mean?
Ghast means having a ghastly appearance; weird.
What is ghast the alternative form of?
Ghast is the alternative form of gast.
What part of speech is ghast?
Ghast can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce ghast?
Ghast is pronounced /ɡæst/.

Words near ghast in the dictionary

  1. Ghassanids
  2. Ghassemi
  3. ghassoul
  4. Ghassulian
  5. Ghassulians
  6. ghast
  7. ghasted
  8. ghastful
  9. ghastfull
  10. ghastfully
  11. ghastfulness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ghast (page history and authors); gast (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-ghast.wav.

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