as in haunting
of, relating to, or suggestive of a ghost
They spotted a spectral figure in the window of the old abandoned house.
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Recent Examples of spectral
The installation puts people inside that spectral array of color to capture the essence of those sunrises and sunsets.
—
Niyaz Pirani, Los Angeles Times, 10 Apr. 2026
Whatever the full truth of either description (anyone paying attention that November a few years ago soon realized only Wall Street cheered his comeback), I’d argue Altman at this point in his pop-culture evolution has transcended both those designations and any spectral stops in between.
—Steven Zeitchik, HollywoodReporter, 9 Apr. 2026
What starts as a spectral curiosity becomes a terrifying and growing presence with an insatiable hunger that begins to consume her life.
—Christian Zilko, IndieWire, 9 Apr. 2026
Twenty years ago, critic Mark Fisher described Burial’s Untrue as a kind of sonic hauntology, a montage of fractured breakbeats, spectral vocal fragments, and crackle collapsing past and future into a single, diffuse texture.
—Keegan Brady, Rolling Stone, 25 Mar. 2026
See All Example Sentences for spectral
Niyaz Pirani, Los Angeles Times, 10 Apr. 2026
Whatever the full truth of either description (anyone paying attention that November a few years ago soon realized only Wall Street cheered his comeback), I’d argue Altman at this point in his pop-culture evolution has transcended both those designations and any spectral stops in between.
—Steven Zeitchik, HollywoodReporter, 9 Apr. 2026
What starts as a spectral curiosity becomes a terrifying and growing presence with an insatiable hunger that begins to consume her life.
—Christian Zilko, IndieWire, 9 Apr. 2026
Twenty years ago, critic Mark Fisher described Burial’s Untrue as a kind of sonic hauntology, a montage of fractured breakbeats, spectral vocal fragments, and crackle collapsing past and future into a single, diffuse texture.
—Keegan Brady, Rolling Stone, 25 Mar. 2026
See All Example Sentences for spectral
Recent Examples of Synonyms for spectral
Adjective
-
The goal was to find out what would happen when Creasy, who used to excel in harrowing situations, is confronted with the exact conditions that are likely to trigger his most haunting memories.—
Lisa de los Reyes,
HollywoodReporter,
30 Apr. 2026
-
Pictures from the excavation reveal a haunting array of artifacts.—
Andrea Margolis,
FOXNews.com,
29 Apr. 2026
Adjective
-
Martel turns that eerie impassivity into an asset by treating the drone’s perspective as a kind of God’s-eye view of a conflict in which one side is trying to win by way of the inexorable, self-reinforcing power of bureaucracy and paperwork.—
Alison Willmore,
Vulture,
1 May 2026
-
From baby predictions to relationship woes to eerie death foretellings, see some of Tyler Henry's most shockingly accurate predictions.—
Stephanie Sengwe,
PEOPLE,
1 May 2026
Adjective
-
Ohm faces plenty of freaky sights and sounds, from dead bodies and claustrophobic dumbwaiters to a creepy kids show that will give you the willies.—
Brian Truitt,
USA Today,
1 May 2026
-
The book has just been republished by Tor Nightfire, with a wonderfully creepy cover, after gaining traction via TikTok.—
Erik Pedersen,
Oc Register,
1 May 2026
Adjective
-
Per 9News, the phantom warrant seems to trace back to a data entry error in a warrant issued out of Gilpin County, Colorado.—
Joe Wilkins,
Futurism,
29 Apr. 2026
-
Beyond that, non-phantom, non-Dracula vampires aren’t terribly over-exposed in the Broadway genre.—
Chris Jones,
Chicago Tribune,
27 Apr. 2026
Adjective
-
Bryce Dallas Howard is getting ghostly.—
Aaron Couch,
HollywoodReporter,
29 Apr. 2026
-
Sadie Benning and Michael Almereyda have found ghostly, evocative textures using Pixelvision, a Fisher-Price toy camera from the late 1980s.—
Dennis Lim,
The New York Review of Books,
25 Apr. 2026
Adjective
-
Morgan, as Dinkins, is a colleague and eventually friend of a dweeby little documentarian played by Daniel Radcliffe, who starts out as the straight man and then inexorably becomes just as weird as everyone else in this show.—
Roxana Hadadi,
Vulture,
4 May 2026
-
Well, that’s always been weird to me.—
Andy Greene,
Rolling Stone,
3 May 2026
Adjective
-
Also in 2019, the Eternally Yours script helped Port and Wiseman land the job of adapting the UK series Ghosts, another single-camera supernatural comedy for CBS.—
Nellie Andreeva,
Deadline,
1 May 2026
-
The romancer, which bowed in SXSW, follows Julia (Hawke), a frustrated video game designer, and Charlie (Pullman), a struggling musician, having supernatural impacts on the world after attending a couples therapy seminar to repair their volatile relationship.—
Etan Vlessing,
HollywoodReporter,
1 May 2026
Cite this Entry
“Spectral.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/spectral. Accessed 7 May. 2026.
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