haunting

haunting — adjective

1. Something haunting has a sad beauty that stays in your mind long after you have

1.adjectiveB2
Definition

Something haunting has a sad beauty that stays in your mind long after you have seen or heard it.

Example

Salma listened to the haunting melody and felt tears in her eyes.

collocation: haunting melody / haunting music / haunting voice

The old lighthouse had a haunting beauty that the photographs could not capture.

Common collocations
  • haunting melody
  • haunting beauty
  • haunting voice
  • haunting image
  • haunting silence
  • haunting scene
Synonyms
  • poignant

    suggests gentle sadness without the lingering, unforgettable quality of haunting

  • evocative

    brings memories to mind but does not carry the sadness that haunting implies

  • unforgettable

    broader — can describe anything memorable, not just sad or beautiful things

  • melancholy

    describes a mood or atmosphere of sadness, but lacks the persistent lingering sense of haunting

Antonyms
  • forgettable

    something that does not stay in the mind at all

  • cheerful

    opposite in emotional tone — happy rather than sadly beautiful

Usage Note

Commonly describes sounds (voices, songs, silence), images (photographs, faces), or scenes (landscapes, buildings). Does not describe something that causes fear — for fear, use frightening or creepy instead.

Common Mistakes

That song is very hauntingful.
That song is very haunting.
haunting is already an adjective; do not add the suffix -ful.
The movie was haunted.' (when you mean it made a strong emotional impression).
The movie was haunting.
haunted means affected by a ghost; haunting means deeply moving in a sad way.

haunting — noun

Word family

Synonym discussion

Sense: adjective/1

Poignant suggests a gentle, often sentimental sadness — for example, a poignant farewell scene — while haunting carries a stronger sense of lingering, almost unsettling beauty that will not leave the mind. Evocative brings memories or feelings to mind without the sadness; a photograph can be evocative without being haunting. Unforgettable is much broader and can apply to anything memorable, whether positive, negative, or neutral. Melancholy describes a mood or atmosphere of sadness but lacks the persistent, sticky quality of haunting. Compare: 'The haunting melody of the cello stayed with me for days' versus 'The melancholy melody of the cello simply sounded sad' — the first lingers in your mind, the second just describes the mood.

poignantevocativeunforgettable ↗melancholy

Common collocations

Nouns

Phrases

  • haunting quality
  • something haunting about

Prepositions

Etymology

Old FrenchMiddle EnglishModern English

Haunting comes from the verb haunt, which entered English from Old French hanter, meaning 'to visit often or regularly.' In medieval times, haunt referred to a place that animals or people frequently visited. By the 1500s, haunt began to be used for ghosts that 'visit' a location repeatedly. The emotional, non-ghostly meaning — a memory or feeling that will not leave the mind — developed in the 1800s.