Word.ws English Dictionary

ghost-ride

ghost-ride verb: to accelerate, exit, and then move along or even dance on top of (a moving vehicle), with or without the intention of getting back in.

Verb

ghost-ride (third-person singular simple present ghost-rides, present participle ghost-riding, simple past ghost-rode, past participle ghost-ridden)

  1. (rare, transitive) To accelerate, exit, and then move along or even dance on top of (a moving vehicle), with or without the intention of getting back in.
    • As an overturned police car burned out of control, a rioter got hold of a lifeguard ATC three-wheeler, ghost-rode it into the fire, turned around and raised both arms in triumph.2003, Sam George, The Perfect Day: 40 Years of Surfer Magazine, →ISBN, page 114
    • But that's what happened, as thrill seekers followed his command to exit their moving cars ("whips") and dance alongside and on top of them. Though ghost riding already existed in the hyphy scene of Bay Area hip-hop, "Tell Me" so popularized the craze that Kendra, the youngest of Hugh Hefner's...2006 November, “Riding Hood”, in Spin, volume 22, number 11, page 48

Forms of ghost-ride

third-person singular presentghost-rides
present participleghost-riding
pastghost-rode
past participleghost-ridden
alternative formghost ride
alternative formghostride

Origin of ghost-ride

From the idea that the driverless vehicle looks like it is being driven by a ghost. The practice and the term originated in the San Francisco Bay Area and were popularized by E-40's 2006 song Tell Me When to Go (2006).

Questions about ghost-ride

What does ghost-ride mean?
Ghost-ride means to accelerate, exit, and then move along or even dance on top of (a moving vehicle), with or without the intention of getting back in.
What part of speech is ghost-ride?
Ghost-ride is a verb.
What is the past tense of ghost-ride?
The past tense of ghost-ride is ghost-rode.

Words near ghost-ride in the dictionary

  1. ghost-ping
  2. ghost-pinged
  3. ghost-pinging
  4. ghost-pings
  5. ghost-ridden
  6. ghost-ride
  7. ghost-rides
  8. ghost-riding
  9. ghost-rode
  10. ghost-townish
  11. ghost-write

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ghost-ride (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: “ghost-ride.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ghost-ride. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.