Gastly

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Causing horror or fear through a grim, shocking appearance ; extremely unpleasant or dreadful in quality ; unnaturally pale, as if drained of life
2. Frightful and deeply disturbing to see or experience ; very bad, disagreeable or unpleasant to deal with ; having a sickly, corpse-like whiteness
3. Inspiring dread through something grisly or hideous ; awful or wretched in a way that is hard to bear ; looking deathly white or spectral

Etymology: "Gastly" is an adjective formed from "gast," a Middle English verb meaning "to frighten," with the adjective-forming suffix "-ly" added to it. The verb "gast" comes from an Old English root that also gave us "aghast," which still carries the sense of being struck with sudden fear or horror. So the word began as a plain description of something that inspires dread, long before "ghastly" came to mean something closer to hideous or unpleasant. Note that "gastly" is an older spelling. The modern form in standard English is "ghastly," and the spelling with the "h" was a later development. Readers who meet "gastly" in older texts are looking at the same word with the same meaning: something that makes you recoil in fright.