ghastly

CEFRC1

/ˈɡɑːs(t).li/

adjective · adverb

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    adjective

    Very frightening, unpleasant, or shocking.

  2. 02

    adjective

    Extra detail

    Extremely bad.

Examples

  • He could not by any means tolerate the ghastly smell of rotting onion.

  • His knee turned a ghastly blackish purple from the swelling.

At a glance

Sits at C1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
2
Citations
5
Synonyms
5

Also pronounced

  • /ˈɡas(t).li/

Deep Dive

adjective

Extra meanings

  1. Horrifyingly shocking.

  2. Like a ghost in appearance; death-like; pale; pallid; dismal.

adverb

Extra meaning

  1. In a ghastly manner.

More examples

In context

  • The play was simply ghastly.

  • Each turned his face with a ghastly pang.

  • His face was so ghastly that it could scarcely be recognized.

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The horrible accident left a blank scene that made everyone sick.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

adjective

From a conflation of gastly, from Middle English gastly, from gasten (from Old English gǣstan (“to torment, frighten”)) + -ly, and ghostly (which was also spelt gastlich in Middle English). Equivalent to ghast/gast + -ly. Spelling with gh developed in the 16th century due to the conflation.