Ghostly vs Macabre - What's the difference?
ghostly | macabre |
Of or pertaining to ghosts or spirits.
Spooky; frightening.
Relating to the soul; not carnal or secular; spiritual.
* Book of Common Prayer
* Jeremy Taylor
Representing or personifying death.
* 1941 , George C. Booth, Mexico's School-made Society , page 106
Obsessed with death or the gruesome.
* 1993 , Theodore Ziolkowski, "Wagner's Parsifal'' between Mystery and Mummery", ''in'' Werner Sollors (ed.), ''The Return of Thematic Criticism , pages 274-275
Ghastly, shocking, terrifying.
* 1927 [1938], , Introduction
As adjectives the difference between ghostly and macabre
is that ghostly is of or pertaining to ghosts or spirits while macabre is representing or personifying death.ghostly
English
Adjective
(er)- a ghostly figure with a hood.
- a ghostly confessor
- Save and defend us from our ghostly enemies.
- One of the ghostly children of St. Jerome.
Synonyms
* See alsoSee also
* (l)macabre
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- There are four fundamental figures. One is a man measuring and comparing his world In front of him is a macabre figure, a cadaver ready to be dissected. This symbolizes man serving mankind. The third figure is the scientist, the man who makes use of the information gathered in the first two fields of mensurable science.
- Indeed, in the 1854 draft of Tristan he planned to have Parzival visit the dying knight, and both operas display the same macabre obsession with bloody gore and festering wounds.
- The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from every-day life.