ghostly
Of or pertaining to ghosts or spirits.
Adjective
- Of or pertaining to ghosts or spirits.
- a ghostly figure with a hood
- The graveyard was haunted by a ghostly figure of a young girl.
- The ghostly moaning was heard from upstairs.
- Spooky; frightening.
- A ghostly hush fell.
- Scores of coconut-shell fires blazed with their characteristic glaring white flame, throwing grotesque shadows on the brown thatched huts, dancing in fairylike shimmerings among the domes of coconut fronds, casting...
- His lips were chapped and lined with a ghostly purple fringe. - 2019, Dave Eggers, The Parade, N.Y.: Vintage Books, page 134:
Synonyms: affreux alarming spine-tingling appalling awful eldritch buggish butt-clenching buttock-clenching dismayful dreadful fearful flaysome flesh-crawling formidable freaky frightening frightensome frightful ghastly ghostly grisly hair-curling hair-raising
- Relating to the soul; not carnal or secular; spiritual.
- a ghostly confessor
- Save and defend us from our ghostly enemies. - 1549 March 7, Thomas Cranmer [et al.], compilers, The Booke of the Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacramentes, […], London: […] Edowardi Whitchurche […], →OCLC:
- one of the ghostly children of St. Jerome - 1651, Jer[emy] Taylor, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living. […], 2nd edition, London: […] Francis Ashe […], →OCLC:
Origin
From Middle English gostly, gastlich, from Old English gāstlīċ (“spiritual, holy, clerical (not lay), ghastly, ghostly, spectral”), from Proto-West Germanic *gaistalīk (“spiritual”), equivalent to ghost + -ly. Cognate with Scots ghaistly, gaistly (“spiritual, ghastly, terrifying”), West Frisian geastlik (“spiritual, clerical, religious”), Dutch geestelijk (“spiritual, clerical, ecclesiastical”), German geistlich (“spiritual, sacred, religious”), Danish geistlig (“ecclesiastical, clerical”).
Forms
Synonyms
apparitional ghastly ghostish ghostlike ghostly phantomic phantomlike phantasmal phantasmic spectral spooky wraithlike wraithy