ghostly
/ˈɡoʊstli/ adjective
Forms ghostlier ghostliest
- adjective Of or pertaining to ghosts or spirits. “a ghostly figure with a hood”
- adjective Spooky; frightening. “A ghostly hush fell.”
- adjective (archaic) Relating to the soul; not carnal or secular; spiritual.
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 apparitional ghostlike phantasmal spectral spiritual
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”).
Webster’s 1913
- adjective Relating to the soul; not carnal or secular; spiritual; as, a ghostly confessor.
- adjective Of or pertaining to apparitions. Akenside.
- adverb Spiritually; mystically. Chaucer.
Etymology [OE. gastlich, gostlich, AS. gastlic. See Ghost.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “ghostly”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details