ghostly
/ˈɡoʊstli/
ghostly adjective: of or pertaining to ghosts or spirits.
Adjective
ghostly (comparative ghostlier, superlative ghostliest)
- Of or pertaining to ghosts or spirits.
- a ghostly figure with a hood
- The graveyard was haunted by a ghostly figure of a young girl.
- Spooky; frightening.
- A ghostly hush fell.
- Scores of coconut-shell fires blazed with their characteristic glaring white flame, throwing grotesque shadows on the brown thatched huts, dancing in fairylike shimmerings among the domes of coconut fronds, casting ghostly reaches of light through the adjacent graveyards, and silhouetting the forms...1929, Robert Dean Frisbee, The Book of Puka-Puka, Eland, published 2019, page 35
- Synonyms:
- affreux, alarming, spine-tingling, appalling, awful, eldritch, buggish, butt-clenching, buttock-clenching, dismayful
- Relating to the soul; not carnal or secular; spiritual.
- a ghostly confessor
- Save and defend us from our ghostly enemies.1549 March 7, Thomas Cranmer [et al.], compilers, The Booke of the Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacramentes, […], London: […] Edowardi Whitchurche […], →OCLC
ghostly meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
ghostly in Hindi
- pertaining to ghosts
- भुतहा bhuthā
- spooky, frightening
- भुतहा bhuthā
ghostly in Urdu
- بھوت کا سا, خیالی, روحی
ghostly in Bengali
- pertaining to ghosts
- ভৌতিক bhōutik
ghostly in Malayalam
- ghostlike, spectral, phantom
- ആത്മവിഷയകമായ, പ്രേതതുല്യമായ, പ്രേതത്തെ സംബന്ധിച്ച, പ്രേതാത്മാവായ, അദൃശ്യശക്തിയായ, പ്രേതസ്വരൂപമായ
Examples of ghostly in a sentence
- The ghostly moaning was heard from upstairs.
- His lips were chapped and lined with a ghostly purple fringe.2019, Dave Eggers, The Parade, N.Y.: Vintage Books, page 134:
Synonyms of ghostly
- affreux
- alarming
- spine-tingling
- appalling
- awful
- eldritch
- butt-clenching
- buttock-clenching
- dreadful
- fearful
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
- flaysome
- flesh-crawling
- formidable
- freaky
- frightening
- frightensome
- frightful
- ghastly
- grisly
- hair-curling
- hair-raising
- horrible
- horrid
- horrific
- horrifying
- horripilating
- pulse-pounding
- scaring
- scary
- shocking
- skin-crawling
- terrible
- terrifying
- terrorsome
- apparitional
- ghostish
- ghostlike
- phantomic
- phantomlike
- phantasmal
Forms of ghostly
| comparative | ghostlier |
|---|---|
| superlative | ghostliest |
Origin of ghostly
From Middle English gostly, gastlich, from Old English gāstlīċ (“spiritual, holy, clerical (not lay), ghastly, ghostly, spectral”), from Proto-West Germanic *gaistalīk (“spiritual”), equivalent to ghost + -ly. Cognate with Scots ghaistly, gaistly (“spiritual, ghastly, terrifying”), West Frisian geastlik (“spiritual, clerical, religious”), Dutch geestelijk (“spiritual, clerical, ecclesiastical”), German geistlich (“spiritual, sacred, religious”), Danish geistlig (“ecclesiastical, clerical”).
Words formed from ghostly
Phrases with ghostly
Questions about ghostly
- What does ghostly mean?
- Ghostly means of or pertaining to ghosts or spirits.
- What is ghostly in Hindi?
- Ghostly in Hindi is भुतहा (bhuthā). See Ghostly meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use ghostly in a sentence?
- The ghostly moaning was heard from upstairs.
- What part of speech is ghostly?
- Ghostly is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce ghostly?
- Ghostly is pronounced /ˈɡoʊstli/ (US).
Words near ghostly in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ghostly (page history and authors); ghostly (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ghostly (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-ghostly.ogg.
Cite this entry: “ghostly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ghostly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.