adjective
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ghostly or eerie
a spooky house
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resembling or appropriate to a ghost
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easily frightened; highly strung
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of spooky
Explanation
Spooky things make a shiver go down your spine—they're scary or creepy. A movie's spooky music might be enough to make you cover your eyes in fear. This informal adjective is perfect for talking about things that make you feel afraid or deeply uneasy. Haunted houses are spooky, and the sound of quiet footsteps crunching through the leaves outside your tent at night are spooky too—at least until your brother yells, "Boo!" You can also use spooky to mean "easily spooked," like a nervous horse that jumps at the slightest sound.
Vocabulary lists containing spooky
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Strange
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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 film feels spooky in its prescience, but Ferrell and McKay were far from alone in noticing the culture was heading out of the cities.
From Salon ● Aug. 16, 2026
Volunteer Laurie Bolewitz whipped out a journal and read to us original spooky stories she wrote.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 10, 2026
"They were really spooky, all you could hear was drip, drip, drip. There were no lights."
From BBC ● Jul. 11, 2026
Coherence is also closely tied to quantum entanglement, the phenomenon that prompted Albert Einstein to describe it as "spooky action at a distance."
From Science Daily ● Jul. 5, 2026
“I don’t think I’d better do any driving. Papa lets me drive our old mules once in a while but I don’t know about driving these mares. They’re kinda spooky, you know.”
From "Summer of the Monkeys" by Wilson Rawls
While Ortega wore a bright pink Valentino dress to last year's Met Gala, this year she went with a distinctly spookier and more gothic vibe.
From BBC ● May 2, 2023
A more apt slogan for these games might be lonelier, quieter, spookier.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 19, 2022
The whole thing seems like fertile ground for del Toro, who’s drawn to the stranger, spookier corners of the imagination.
From New York Times ● Dec. 15, 2021
Organizers say that “while intended for all ages, the event is less scary during our daytime hours and gets spookier as the night goes on.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2021
I meant to take Fina to the old part of the graveyard, which is much spookier than this part.
From "How to Disappear Completely" by Ali Standish
Rather, they are merely Halloween-inspired, containing candies that are shaped like bats and cats — undeniably two of the spookiest creatures.
From Salon ● Sep. 29, 2025
Not any more, now that I put together this guide to what to do in and around New York City during the year’s spookiest month.
From New York Times ● Sep. 30, 2023
Consolidation has long been the publishing industry’s buzziest, and probably spookiest, existential threat.
From Slate ● Aug. 11, 2023
Soon enough, Powell was recalling the spookiest things he’d seen in his years at the store.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 19, 2023
It gits almighty cold there in September, an' it was sure the spookiest show I ever seen.
From Humorous Ghost Stories by Dorothy Scarborough
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.
