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:
Much of the novel comes in the form of chatter among the cemetery’s ghostly residents, and the novel’s depiction of this graveyard cacophony reflects the chaos of the Civil War, raging all the while.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 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
Hollywood may be ghostly, the Duchess told us, but it was hers to haunt.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 22, 2026
It was dark now, and the winter sky was alive with the twisting, dancing, ghostly green lights of the Aurora Borealis.
From "Two Degrees" by Alan Gratz
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
Grave players on ethereal harpsichords, My senses wrought a music exquisite As patterned roses, all my life's accords Were richer, ghostlier than peacocks white.
From The Hours of Fiammetta A Sonnet Sequence by Rachel Annand Taylor
Night darkens, , and again the Southern Cross glimmers before our prow, and the two Milky Ways reveal themselves,—that of the Cosmos and that ghostlier one which stretches over the black deep behind us.
From Two Years in the French West Indies by Lafcadio Hearn
Is Europe's ghostliest train station about to rise again?
From BBC ● Oct. 17, 2022
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
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
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
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
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.