haunt

verb

ˈhȯnt 

ˈhänt

haunted; haunting; haunts

transitive verb

1

of a ghost : to visit or inhabit

believes that the house is haunted

Spirits are supposed to haunt the places where their bodies most resorted …

—Charles Dickens

2

a

: to visit often : frequent

spends a lot of time haunting the bookstore

b

: to continually seek the company of

haunting celebrities

impostors that haunt the official in foreign ports

—Van Wyck Brooks

3

a

: to have a disquieting or harmful effect on eventually : trouble

Problems we ignore now will come back to haunt us.

b

: to recur constantly and spontaneously to

The memory haunted her.

c

: to reappear continually in

a sense of tension that haunts his writing

intransitive verb

1

of a ghost : to appear habitually

Not far from Hillside Gate, where she haunted, appeared for a short time a much more remarkable spirit.

—W. B. Yeats

2

: to stay around or persist : linger

a haunting fragrance

haunter noun

hauntingly

ˈhȯn-tiŋ-lē 

ˈhän-

adverb

Synonyms of haunt

• visit
• frequent
• affect

Examples of haunt in a Sentence

Some people believe that the ghost of an old sea captain haunts the beach.

If you ignore the problem, it will come back to haunt you.

Their failure to plan ahead is now coming back to haunt them.

The tune haunted me all day.

Recent Examples on the Web

These deals have occurred at a time when plunging values, loan defaults and even foreclosures haunt the Bay Area hotel market. —George Avalos, Mercury News, 3 June 2026

Decades after Julian’s vanishing there, the band and various hangers-on recall eerie incidents both in and out of the house—rooms full of occult literature; pub full of haunting photographs—as well as the glimmering stranger circling the Orpheus-esque Julian. —Literary Hub, 2 June 2026

Perhaps this is why Goetz’s voice continues to haunt the airwaves and tabloid headlines, and why he’s sometimes treated as an area expert on self-defense cases. —Kevin Lozano, Harpers Magazine, 2 June 2026

After introducing the central characters of the present narrative, O’Farrell dramatically widens her lens to conjure a brisk yet haunting saga of the peninsula and its inhabitants that spans millennia preceding Tomás’s arrival. —Rachel Vorona Cote, Vulture, 2 June 2026

Word History

Etymology

Middle English haunten, hanten "to frequent, frequent the company of, dwell in, engage in, practice (a vice or virtue), perform," borrowed from Anglo-French hanter, haunter (also continental Old French), of uncertain origin

Note: The origin of the French word has been much argued over in the past century and a half. Given the initial h aspiré (meaning the initial h was pronounced into early modern French and still blocks elision of preceding vowels), the word has usually been given a Germanic source. Perhaps most frequently it has been traced to the Old Norse verb reflected in Old Icelandic heimta "to draw, pull, call on, claim, crave, get back, recover," despite semantic and phonetic objections. Also proffered has been a presumed Old Low Franconian *haimiþōn "to shelter, accommodate." Both etyma are derivatives of Germanic *haima- "dwelling" (see home entry 1). The possibility of a spoken Latin source has been revived in Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (on line), which suggests *ambitāre, from Latin ambitus "circuit" (see ambit)—see full discussion and bibliography there.

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined at transitive sense 2a

Phrases Containing haunt

• come back to haunt

Rhymes for haunt

• daunt
• flaunt
• font
• gaunt
• jaunt
• pont
• taunt
• vaunt
• want
• avant
• croissant
• detente

Kids Definition

haunt

1 of 2 verb

ˈhȯnt 

ˈhänt

1

: to visit often : frequent

they haunted the antique shops

2

a

: to have a disturbing or harmful effect on

problems we ignore now will come back to haunt us

b

: to come back to the mind of again and again

the song haunted me all day

3

: to visit or live in as a ghost

spirits haunted the house

haunter noun

hauntingly

-iŋ-lē 

adverb

haunt

2 of 2 noun

ˈhȯnt 

ˈhänt

: a place repeatedly visited