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:
At the same time, Dean likes to roam through breezy soft rock, ghostly piano laments and bossa nova by way of Dionne Warwick.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 26, 2026
Misinterpreting his ghostly prophecy—“Macbeth shall never vanquished be until / Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill / Shall come against him”—the usurping Scottish king believed his reign was secure.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 30, 2026
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
They hinted at a darker, more gothic aesthetic, with lyrics haunted by ghostly figures and existential crises.
From BBC ● Jul. 18, 2026
Then I caught the patient’s eye and followed it, but could trace nothing as it looked into the moonlit sky except a big bat, which was flapping its silent and ghostly way to the west.
From "Dracula" by Bram Stoker
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
Undern grew ghostlier than ever, seeming, as the shots rang out startlingly loud in the quiet, like a moribund creature electrified by blows.
From Gone to Earth by Mary Gladys Meredith Webb
Is Europe's ghostliest train station about to rise again?
From BBC ● Oct. 17, 2022
It was her turn to smile, the palest, ghostliest of smiles, and even for so much she must have been oddly moved.
From The Strolling Saint; being the confessions of the high and mighty Agostino D'Anguissola, tyrant of Mondolfo and Lord of Carmina in the state of Piacenza by Rafael Sabatini
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
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
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 Lewis Wallace
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.
