haunted

[ hawn-tid, hahn- ]

adjective

1. inhabited or frequented by ghosts:

   a haunted castle.

2. preoccupied, as with an emotion, memory, or idea; obsessed:

   His haunted imagination gave him no peace.

3. disturbed; distressed; worried:

   Haunted by doubt he again turned to law books on the subject.

haunted

/ ˈhɔːntɪd /

adjective

1. frequented or visited by ghosts
2. postpositive obsessed or worried

Other Words From

• un·haunted adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of haunted¹

Middle English word dating back to 1275–1325; haunt, -ed ²

Example Sentences

TikTok users created half-pint haunted houses, complete with micro-clowns and to-scale blood stains.

From Popular-Science

Everyone, no matter where they’re trapped in the world, is also trapped in their own head, and some people’s heads are a little more haunted than others.

From Vox

It won at its haunted house of Utah in the wee Eastern hours, forcing five turnovers so that a person in the East might have kept waking and wondering whether a fumble was a new fumble or a replay of a previous fumble.

From Washington Post

Official guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention marked traditional celebrations such as trick-or-treating and haunted houses as high risk for potential coronavirus exposure.

From Washington Post

External stimuli are useful but what if instead of a haunted house happening around you, you were immersed in it.

From Ozy

Despite his efforts to live in the present, he seemed haunted by the specter of his father.

From The Daily Beast

He read technical journals about film and haunted the theaters and film production companies.

From The Daily Beast

Even though the police and my family and friends believed me, that one voice of doubt is the one that haunted me most.

From The Daily Beast

Were Israeli soldiers so haunted by what they saw and did in the last Gaza war that they took their own lives?

From The Daily Beast

The Lotus and the Storm turns out to be a grand, haunted melodrama with elements of camp, delivered in fragmentary reveries.

From The Daily Beast

Alessandro's face haunted him, and also the memory of Ramona's, as she lay tossing and moaning in the wretched Cahuilla hovel.

From Project Gutenberg

Mrs. Paula was one of those women that haunted the cheap shops and bargain-counters, and was always in debt.

From Project Gutenberg

Pa Babcock affirmed the tale and declared that this was why he had left off working on the haunted farm.

From Project Gutenberg

Once, when a boy, he had seen Henry Irving in Faust; he saw the devils on the haunted mountain; he heard their hideous cries.

From Project Gutenberg

I should be ashamed that pages, tear-stained and dream-haunted, should fall beneath the eyes of grave, sober-minded folk.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• obsessed