Haunting

How to spell haunting

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce haunting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does haunting mean?

1. adjectivePoignant and beautiful in a way that lingers in the mind and is hard to forget.
2. verbPresent participle of haunt: repeatedly troubling, occupying, or returning to someone or somewhere.
3. nounAn instance of a place being visited or disturbed by a ghost.

Haunting in a sentence

• adjective

  The film closed with a haunting piano melody that stayed with the audience.

• verb

  The memory of the accident kept haunting him for years.

• noun

  The inn became famous for an alleged haunting on the top floor.

• adjective

  Her voice had a haunting quality that the critics praised.

• verb

  Rumours of a ghost haunting the old mill drew curious visitors.

• noun

  Locals dismissed the so-called haunting as creaking pipes and draughts.

Where does haunting come from?

Language of origin: French

This word grows out of the verb 'haunt', which English borrowed from the Old French 'hanter', meaning 'to frequent a place' or 'to resort to it often'. The French verb is widely believed to descend from a Germanic root related to 'home' and the idea of dwelling or returning to a familiar spot, which is why the earliest English sense, recorded around the 1200s, was simply to visit somewhere habitually. Only later, by the 1500s, did the ghostly sense develop, as the spirits of the dead were imagined to keep returning to the houses and grounds they had known in life. The '-ing' form then split into two lives: a literal one about spirits lingering, and a figurative adjective meaning beautifully sad or impossible to forget. The silent middle, where 'au' spells the long vowel and the 't' sits before '-ing', is the usual spelling snag, since the word sounds simpler than it looks.

How the word is built

• haunt (to frequent, to visit repeatedly)
• -ing (present participle / adjective / noun suffix)