Spooky

How to spell spooky

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce spooky

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does spooky mean?

1. adjectiveEerie, frightening, or suggestive of ghosts in an unsettling way.

Spooky in a sentence

• The abandoned house at the end of the lane felt genuinely spooky after dark.

• They decorated the office with cobwebs and dim lights for a spooky effect.

Where does spooky come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

The base word 'spook' came into English in the early 1800s from Dutch 'spook', meaning a ghost, spectre, or apparition; the same root appears in German 'Spuk' for a haunting or ghostly disturbance. English speakers borrowed 'spook' first as a noun for a ghost and only later added the everyday adjective 'spooky', which is recorded from the mid 1800s with the sense of being eerie or frightening in a ghostly way. The double letter 'oo' in the spelling preserves the long vowel inherited straight from the Dutch form, and the ending simply attaches the familiar English '-y' suffix that turns a noun into an adjective, as in 'rocky' or 'cloudy'. Over time the word softened in tone, so today it can describe anything from a genuinely unsettling old house to a playfully creepy film or a strange coincidence. The spelling is mostly straightforward, with the main thing to remember being the two letter o's followed by a single 'k' before the '-y'.

How the word is built

• spook (ghost, from Dutch spook)
• -y (adjective suffix: having the quality of)