ghostly
Adjective Satellite
- resembling or characteristic of a phantom
- "a ghostly face at the window"
Adj
- Of or pertaining to ghosts or spirits.
- Spooky; frightening.
- Relating to the soul; not carnal or secular; spiritual.
Adjective
- Resembling a ghost; spectral or eerie.
Examples
- a ghostly figure with a hood
- A ghostly hush fell.
- His GHOSTLY silence after I played ’QUIXOTIC’ told me I’d won the Words With Friends match.
- The ghostly moaning was heard from upstairs.
- The graveyard was haunted by a ghostly figure of a young girl.
Origin / Etymology
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”).
Synonyms
apparitional, ghostlike, phantasmal, spectral, spiritual, affreux, alarming, appalling, awful, buggish, butt-clenching, buttock-clenching, dismayful, dreadful, fearful, flaysome, flesh-crawling, formidable, freaky, frightening, frightensome, frightful, ghastly, ghostish, ghostly, grisly, hair-curling, hair-raising, horrible, horrid, horrific, horrifying, horripilating, phantasmic, phantomic, phantomlike, pulse-pounding, scaring, scary, shocking, skin-crawling, spooky, terrible, terrifying, terrorsome, wraithlike, wraithy
Scrabble Score: 14
ghostly: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordghostly: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
ghostly: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary