ghost town

noun

: a once-flourishing town wholly or nearly deserted usually as a result of the exhaustion of some natural resource

Examples of ghost town in a Sentence

After all the gold was mined, the place became a ghost town.

Recent Examples on the Web

Other staffers have described the institution to me as a ghost town. — Janay Kingsberry, The Atlantic, 30 July 2026

The site has become a ghost town in the decades since the border crossing closed in the 1980s. — Michael Loria, USA Today, 29 July 2026

Explore a ghost town called Ashcroft, that’s just south of Aspen and has past lives as a silver mining town in the 1880s and then had a reprisal as a ski resort development. — Brittany Anas, Forbes.com, 27 July 2026

Today, abandoned and reclaimed by nature, it is preserved as a ghost town that once helped electrify the US. — Kieron Marchese, Architectural Digest, 27 July 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1894, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for ghost town

• adown
• blowdown
• breakdown
• countdown
• crackdown
• crosstown
• downtown
• drawdown
• dropdown
• facedown
• godown
• hometown

Kids Definition

ghost town

noun

: a town deserted because some natural resource has been used up