adjective
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of or resembling a ghost; spectral
a ghostly face appeared at the window
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suggesting the presence of ghosts; eerie
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archaic of or relating to the soul or spirit
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of ghostly
before 900; Middle English; Old English gāstlīc. See ghost, -ly
Explanation
Something ghostly looks or sounds like a ghost — strange and chilling. A ghostly figure appearing out of the fog can seem slightly unearthly. Distant, ghostly music sometimes echoes through an empty subway station, and ghostly voices can often be heard in stairwells or hallways, seeming to come from nowhere. Even your neighbor's glowing TV screen can appear ghostly on a dark night. The Old English root of ghostly is gastlic, which means "spiritual, holy, or not of the flesh," and also "supernatural."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
They hinted at a darker, more gothic aesthetic, with lyrics haunted by ghostly figures and existential crises.
From BBC ● Jul. 18, 2026
The ghostly white creature curled up on a weighing scale is almost unrecognisable in the Facebook post offering it for sale.
From Barron's ● Jun. 29, 2026
Marcia suggested that Obi-Wan Kenobi could then be a ghostly presence.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 2, 2026
Before that, the 50-year-old artist, who years ago dropped his surname Javacheff, erected a billowing, white “running fence” that curved through California farm lands like a ghostly ribbon dropped by an unseen hand.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 7, 2026
In a flash, the kitten became a ghostly skeleton, as if it had stepped behind an X-ray machine.
From "The House of Hades" by Rick Riordan
At 60 minutes, the production is not quite as tight as it could be; its shifts into Bete’s childhood, and other, ghostlier realms don’t always persuade.
From New York Times ● Aug. 26, 2021
Soon Anna and Vronsky and a few ghostlier figures are languishing in the corners of the tidy condo she shares with her dentist husband and school-age son.
From New York Times ● Nov. 30, 2017
Yet nothing is ghostlier than the hawk itself.
From Slate ● Mar. 6, 2015
The ghostly dark, Made ghostlier by its sheet of snow, Wailed round them its tempestuous wo, Like Death's announcing courier!
From Selections from American poetry, with special reference to Poe, Longfellow, Lowell and Whittier by Carhart, Margaret Spraque
So the Brook to Telka cried, But my Telka naught replied; And, as in a strange affright, Paled the Rose a ghostlier white.
From Second Book of Verse by Field, Eugene
Is Europe's ghostliest train station about to rise again?
From BBC ● Oct. 17, 2022
It was as if all the ghosts in Hades had suddenly piped up at their shrillest and ghostliest.
From The Yeoman Adventurer by Gough, George W.
Dead rich purples cloud broadly behind and above the indigo blackness of the serrated hills—mist purples, fading upward smokily into faint vermilions and dim gold, which again melt up through ghostliest greens into the blue.
From Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan First Series by Hearn, Lafcadio
He had walked in total unconsciousness, neither hearing nor seeing anybody or anything, and without a thought of where he was going, or the ghostliest semblance of a purpose in his mind.
From Ben-Hur; a tale of the Christ by Wallace, Lewis
It was the strangest, ghostliest thing he had ever seen!
From Warlock o' Glenwarlock by MacDonald, George
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
