ghost bullet
ghost bullet noun: a bullet that is shot by an unseen assailant or one that cannot be seen or heard when it is shot.
Noun
ghost bullet (plural ghost bullets)
- A bullet that is shot by an unseen assailant or one that cannot be seen or heard when it is shot.
- […] not see them— ghost-bullets flying.1966, Victor Jeremy Jerome, The Paper Bridge, page 118
- […] a 'ghost' bullet from a resisting gun strikes an innocent American tourist; a bomb explodes and the faces of four young school-girls smile defiantly at their Israeli jailer.1970, The Arab World - Volume 16, page 2
- A bullet that cannot be found or that is untraceable through ballistic testing.
- Let us assume that this 'ghost bullet' idea is correct. Let us write an equation which relates the distance the ordinary bullet travels with the direction of the recoil of the gun and the amount of recoil, assuming that a ghost bullet does travel off at some strange angle each time.1964, Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, page 412
- And the ghost bullet allowed me to introduce new depths of police corruption.2012, Douglas Corleone, Last Lawyer Standing, page 304
- An imaginary bullet.
- Since nightfall he's bracing himself for the hallucinations he knows are soon to come. Crickets offer their resonant chorus, but they don't drown out the sounds of ghost bullets whistling in the air.2011, Nicole Pickens, Fictitious Tales for the Children of God, page 40
- we are animals dodging ghost bullets in our dreams2016, Susan Joyner-Stumpf, Whisper Into the Dawn, page 134
- A supernatural bullet that wounds or kills a person, especially one that is shot by a supernatural assailant.
- People believe that a beast shoots "ghost bullets" when they ford a stream in Sihch'uan at any time except the winter months .1968, Wolfram Eberhard, The Local Cultures of South and East China, page 195
- The leaves were used in the removal of ghost bullets " (supernatural objects that were shot into people by ghosts).1972, Dossier, page 111
- A bullet that can hurt a ghost or undead creature.
- Hardy wondered what happened to you when you were hit with ghost bullets. Did they only kill ghosts, or could they work on the living, too?2010, Scott Nicholson, Drummer Boy: A Supernatural Thriller
- All we have are ghost bullets —and as you saw with Mild Bill, ghost bullets do just fine against the undead.2017, David Boop, Straight Outta Tombstone
- Something nonphysical (such as words, actions, or memory) that causes physical or emotional damage.
- He spoke of radiation as "ghost bullets.” These bullets were deadly if mishandled.2013, William M. Alley, Rosemarie Alley, Too Hot to Touch: The Problem of High-Level Nuclear Waste, page 126
- A ghost bullet in the heart, but he didn't hesitate.2014, Steven R. Boyett, Mortality Bridge
Examples of ghost bullet in a sentence
- A shot screeched past her head from the west, like a ghost bullet seemingly shot from the large gap of El Capitan itself.2005, Amy Lignor, The Heart of a Legend, page 6:
- I planned to fire what are known as "ghost bullets” —ones that nobody at the intersection would even see or hear .2024, Terry Hayes, The Year of the Locust, page 121:
- In a later account of his attack in Jamaica, Brathwaite claims his assailants shot him with a "ghost bullet,” going so far as to narrate his own death in “I Cristobel Colon.”2014, Anthony Reed, Freedom Time, page 224:
- How to tell her he'd felt the ghost bullet slam into his heart, and had known Rahul would kill her?2018, Divya Kumar, The Shrine of Death:
Forms of ghost bullet
| plural | ghost bullets |
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Questions about ghost bullet
- What does ghost bullet mean?
- Ghost bullet means a bullet that is shot by an unseen assailant or one that cannot be seen or heard when it is shot.
- How do you use ghost bullet in a sentence?
- A shot screeched past her head from the west, like a ghost bullet seemingly shot from the large gap of El Capitan itself.
- What part of speech is ghost bullet?
- Ghost bullet is a noun.
- What is the plural of ghost bullet?
- The plural of ghost bullet is ghost bullets.
Words near ghost bullet in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ghost bullet (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 bullet.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ghost_bullet. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.