ghastly
adjective
1.
shockingly repellent; inspiring horror
- “ghastly wounds”
- “the grim aftermath of the bombing”
- “the grim task of burying the victims”
- “a grisly murder”
- “gruesome evidence of human sacrifice”
- “macabre tales of war and plague in the Middle ages”
- “macabre tortures conceived by madmen”
2.
gruesomely indicative of death or the dead
- “a charnel smell came from the chest filled with dead men”
- “;”
- “;”
Origin
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.
WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.