| / English Dictionary |
GHASTLY
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
Irregular inflected forms: ghastlier , ghastliest
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Shockingly repellent; inspiring horror
Example:
macabre tortures conceived by madmen
Synonyms:
ghastly; grim; grisly; gruesome; macabre; sick
Classified under:
Similar:
alarming (frightening because of an awareness of danger)
Derivation:
ghastliness (the quality of being ghastly)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Gruesomely indicative of death or the dead
Example:
the sepulchral darkness of the catacombs
Synonyms:
charnel; ghastly; sepulchral
Classified under:
Similar:
offensive (unpleasant or disgusting especially to the senses)
Derivation:
ghastliness (the quality of being ghastly)
Context examples:
Uriah, with his long hands slowly twining over one another, made a ghastly writhe from the waist upwards, to express his concurrence in this estimation of me.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
He heard mutters of amazement at the ghastly damage wrought, and was drenched with his own blood.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
So for five long minutes the gallant horsemen of Spain and of France strove ever and again to force a passage, until the wailing note of a bugle called them back, and they rode slowly out of bow-shot, leaving their best and their bravest in the ghastly, blood-mottled heap behind them.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
He sprang to it, and then paused, and laid his hand upon his heart; I could hear his teeth grate with the convulsive action of his jaws; and his face was so ghastly to see that I grew alarmed both for his life and reason.
(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
If then the Count meant to scatter these ghastly refuges of his over London, these places were chosen as the first of delivery, so that later he might distribute more fully.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
She had turned a dreadful colour, the more ghastly under the dark dust-streaks upon her face.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I could catch glimpses of my face, white and ghastly, distorted with pain, in the cabin mirror.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
On the first of these occasions, she perpetrated the attempt to burn me in my bed; on the second, she paid that ghastly visit to you.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Even so, they were twice dragged backward by the weight of the sled, and slid and fell down the hill, the living and the dead, the haul-ropes and the sled, in ghastly entanglement.
(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)
Suddenly the broad disk of the moon arose and shone full upon his ghastly and distorted shape as he fled with more than mortal speed.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
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