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

Goedert is expected to miss several weeks, and the depth chart behind him was looking like a ghost town. — Alejandro Avila Outkick, FOXNews.com, 21 Sep. 2026

The streets are quiet — not in the comforting way engendered by a small town that keeps to itself, but like a ghost town, where a once-happy community has been gutted and left for dead. — Ben Travers, IndieWire, 20 Sep. 2026

Murphy’s a whiz with cars, both fixing them and driving them fast, yet those skills only mean so much when the Great Depression is threatening to turn Eugene, Oregon, into a ghost town. — David Fear, Rolling Stone, 16 Sep. 2026

Add to that the expectation that DC will be a ghost town from October to the second week of November for the pivotal election, and many Republicans will be in Texas the rest of this week for the GOP midterms confab. — Dominic Patten, Deadline, 8 Sep. 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