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:
The subtropical southern Japanese region boasts some of the world's most biodiverse hubs of normally multicoloured coral, but a 2024 marine heatwave created "graveyards" of ghostly pale or sickly brown organisms.
From Barron's ● Jul. 29, 2026
The text includes an Omniscient Seashell, drinks that offer forgetfulness or remembering, ghostly apparitions, a magical couples’ retreat at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, and a desert prince who becomes obsessed with Helena.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026
They hinted at a darker, more gothic aesthetic, with lyrics haunted by ghostly figures and existential crises.
From BBC ● Jul. 18, 2026
Hollywood may be ghostly, the Duchess told us, but it was hers to haunt.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 22, 2026
The ghostly, ghastly Mr. Green nodded politely at Mr. Pinkerton but reminded him that he would be on tomorrow’s eight-o’clock train bound for New Orleans.
From "The Detective's Assistant" by Kate Hannigan
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
His shadow proves he was no ghost; but a ghost 138 was never ghostlier than he.
From Oxford Lectures on Poetry by Andrew Cecil Bradley
At last they realised the light was already fading; the mist on all things was ghostlier, and damp in the throat and nostrils.
From An Engagement of Convenience A Novel by Louis Zangwill
Is Europe's ghostliest train station about to rise again?
From BBC ● Oct. 17, 2022
I stood in front of them and did the ghostliest things till I was clean tired out and discouraged.
From Humorous Ghost Stories by Dorothy Scarborough
What I shall do with the young cub I have not the ghostliest shadow of an idea.
From Glengarry School Days: a story of early days in Glengarry by Ralph Connor
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 Lafcadio Hearn
Dead, in the ghostliest sense of the word,—the viewless pressure upon her life of numberless vanished generations.
From Japan: an Attempt at Interpretation by Lafcadio Hearn
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.
