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The dictionary says

ghost somebody: to suddenly stop all communication with somebody, usually online, in order to end a relationship

so, according to the dictionary, we often say "someone ghosted someone" in an online communication.

My question is that

Can we say "someone ghosted someone" in an offline communication?

For example, a couple lived in the same house but the wife avoided to talk with her husband.

Is it correct to say "his wife ghosted him although they lived in the same house"?

If we can not say that, do we have a common phrase to say that in an offline communication?

Tom
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    Be aware that this is ***very*** new slang. It's used mainly by trendy young people on the internet. That means that using it immediately puts you at risk of not being understood by many native speakers, one who are not as young and hip and "in-group" as this word would necessarily mark you as being. – tchrist Jul 26 '22 at 14:01
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    We’d probably call that **shunning** or **the cold shoulder**. – Davislor Jul 26 '22 at 18:39
  • Ignoring someone directly talking to you is non verbal communication – eps Jul 26 '22 at 19:26
  • It's completely correct grammatically, but older readers might be confused as to whether there's a haunting involved. – Cristobol Polychronopolis Jul 26 '22 at 19:33
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    Your example would imply that she not only stopped talking to her husband, but tried very hard to avoid being *seen* by him as well. – chepner Jul 27 '22 at 16:42
  • If you are learning English you should never use that or any other of the modern idioms. I once interviewed someone for a job on my team. They called an expense a "spend". That was the end of their candidacy. – John Douma Jul 28 '22 at 13:44
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    @JohnDouma: That's poor advise. What is important – not only for learners but also for native speakers – is that they're aware of the register to which the idioms belong, and that they choose them accordingly. "Scrum", "story points", and "sprint" are modern idioms – would you really terminate the candidacy because a learner used them in an interview even if they applied for a job in a team that uses Agile development? – Schmuddi Jul 28 '22 at 14:26
  • @Schmuddi Scrum, story points and the like are jargon used by software engineers who use Agile. That is completely different than someone who uses a verb as a noun. The former shows that you understand the language of software; the latter shows you to be uneducated. – John Douma Jul 28 '22 at 14:29
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    @JohnDouma: "to ghost someone" is jargon as well. Perhaps it's not a jargon that you understand, or that you want to use, but that's pretty irrelevant to the discussion. To be blunt, claiming that using this jargon was a sign of lack of education reveals that you may be arguing based on a non-linguistic concept of context-specific language use. By the way, using nouns as verbs (or any similar type of conversion) is a highly productive word-formation pattern of English, and it has been so for centuries. How do you think pairs like _the cut_ – _to cut_ have come into existence? – Schmuddi Jul 28 '22 at 14:39
  • @Schmuddi To ghost someone is slang, not jargon. To your point, if a person has mastered a language, then the use of slang or idioms can actually be clever, even eloquent. But do you honestly believe that a non-native speaker will be better received if he uses slang rather than proper English? – John Douma Jul 28 '22 at 14:43
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    @JohnDouma: If the non-native speaker uses slang or jargon that is appropriate for the context, then yes, they will be received as good or even better than if they used "proper English" (the term that you want to use here is probably "standard English"). If you happen to dine with the Queen and you don't speak the slang that is used in these circles, but only standard English, than you may not as well-received as you hope. If you're invited to dine with a group of ex-Proud Boys, but you speak the slang that the Queen uses, you may not be that well-received either. Context matters, always. – Schmuddi Jul 28 '22 at 14:51
  • @Schmuddi I doubt the queen of England uses slang. Using a language that is proper to the surroundings is not necessarily idiomatic. But again, someone learning the language should not attempt to context switch. This is not a site for writers or even college English majors. This is a site for those learning English. We should not recommend the use of slang. – John Douma Jul 28 '22 at 15:08
  • @JohnDouma If an English language learner befriends a group of young hip native English speakers who say things like "she ghosted him", then why shouldn't the English language learner use that slang too? I think that is what Schmuddi is getting at. – Cave Johnson Jul 29 '22 at 01:21
  • @CaveJohnson His or her speech will be diminished if they speak like that all the time. If the person has learned enough English to be able to context switch then it is perfectly okay. The problem is that if you are doing this while learning, then you may not know what you sound like to the non-hipsters. – John Douma Jul 29 '22 at 01:30
  • @JohnDouma you didn’t hire someone because they used “spend” not “expense”? It’s literally in the dictionary… I think that candidate dodged a bullet. – Tim Jul 29 '22 at 09:59
  • @Tim It is "literally in the dictionary". Do you know any words that are figuratively in the dictionary? Spend is a verb, not a noun. – John Douma Jul 29 '22 at 17:57
  • @JohnDouma “literally” in that sentence was for emphasis, not clarity. I don’t see how that confused you. Spend is both a verb and a noun. Your lack of familiarity with English doesn’t change that fact. – Tim Jul 29 '22 at 17:59

7 Answers7

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"Ghosting" is a fairly new word in Engilsh, and the full range of its use hasn't been explored, but my guess is that when it settles, it will not be possible to ghost someone who knows where you are.

The reason it's called "ghosting" is because you completely disappear, as if by magic, from someone's life, and they're unable to contact you. The husband could clearly still contact his wife, but she would choose each time not to respond.

What you're talking about is "the silent treatment":

His wife gave him the silent treatment.

No need to mention that she still lived there.

gotube
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His wife ghosted him although they lived in the same house.

The usage is unusual. We can all agree on that.

Certainly the grammar is correct. I think the meaning is also 100% clear—at least, it is clear to people who are familiar with the recent usage of ghost.

I will even go so far as to say that your proposed usage is clever. If I heard a native speaker say it or read it in a magazine (e.g., BuzzFeed) I would not think twice about it. Depending on the context, I might even laugh. The beauty of the expression is not that it is accurate but that it is inaccurate in a way that still makes sense.

The only risk I see is the same one that arises whenever someone with an accent says something unexpected: some listeners might conclude that you have made a mistake. I'm sure you make judgments about such situations pretty regularly.

Jeffrey Carney
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    Yes, there's an attractive "poetic misuse" to it – gotube Jul 26 '22 at 14:32
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    I must say that I would have no idea what the intended meaning was if it were not for the explanations given in this thread. If I had understood the slang use with regard to social media, then I agree that I would have viewed it as a cleverly constructed play on words. Not knowing that, I would think the speaker an idiot. The moral: know your audience before using slang. – Jeff Morrow Jul 26 '22 at 21:09
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    One thing about "accurate but inaccurate" usages like this is that, if they become widespread, they disrupt the original meaning and make it harder to communicate about the original concept. Folks who are aware of this phenomenon and affected by it may be really irritated with your choice to do such a thing. – R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE Jul 27 '22 at 16:17
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    I'm not young, and never been on most social media — yet the meaning was immediately clear to me without further explanation. I think the term has already gained some currency in the wider world. – gidds Jul 28 '22 at 09:33
  • I am perfectly familiar with the concept ghosting, and it was **not at all** clear to me what the sentence meant – quite the opposite, I actively misunderstood it. To me, the sentence can only mean that the wife ignored her husband’s text messages, phone calls, e-mails, etc. It says nothing about whether she spoke to him in person when they were together in the house, because that’s not what ghosting is. If the intended meaning is that she gave him the cold shoulder at home, the sentence fails completely. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 29 '22 at 08:26
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His wife ignored him although they lived in the same house -- this is a plain alternative, assuming you are not asking about grammar.

'Ghosted him' is a fairly rare phrase and I recommend avoiding it in general. The meaning is unclear and somewhat ambiguous: ghosted may also mean to have killed someone.

However, using it could make sense if the context of your text (story?) is intentionally trendy in a semi-pretentious fashion.

If you must use it I'd recommend additional descriptive text to make your meaning completely clear.

Andrew Kìngdom
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As has already been stated in various comments, the usual accepted slang for ignoring someone who is in plain sight is cold shoulder:

Ever since Tom's affair with Angela from accounts, his wife has given him the cold shoulder. There's a really tense atmosphere in their household now.

Another, possibly British English only, slang expression is to blank:

Ever since Tom's affair with Angela from accounts, his wife has blanked him. There's a really tense atmosphere in their household now.

The non-slang version of to blank would be to shun:

Ever since Tom's affair with Angela from accounts, his wife has shunned him. There's a really tense atmosphere in their household now.

Also, as has already been stated, saying that someone is being ghosted whilst they remain in plain sight just makes no sense at all, IMHO.

Greenonline
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  • Perhaps I'm wrong about this, but I would have said "his wife has _been giving_ him the cold shoulder." To me, unlike "ghosting" or "giving the silent treatment," which indicate states, giving the cold shoulder is a perfective aspect action that would be repeated with each attempt at contact or communication. – cjs Jul 29 '22 at 02:11
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I agree that you can't really 'ghost' somebody you live with, unless you are trying to give the impression that you've completely disappeared.

Blanking someone makes sense at least in British English, we also have the delightful phrase sent to Coventry to mean exactly the same thing.

George Savva
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  • Note that neither of these exist in AmE and wouldn't be readily understood if heard. – Drake P Jul 27 '22 at 12:40
  • sorry I'm new to the site is it only for American English? – George Savva Jul 27 '22 at 12:48
  • No you're good, your answer is valuable and all English dialects are welcome here. I just wanted to note for future readers that there's some nuance in when one might use this option since it's not universally understood. – Drake P Jul 27 '22 at 12:59
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    Ah yes, "sent to Coventry" - more popular 200 years ago. :) Of course they weren't *literally* sent to Coventry. ;) In fact, as I recall, it was more of a group punishment, from my old schoolbooks. In other words, a class might send a member of the class "to Coventry" to punish them for something or other, like snitching to a teacher. – Nick Gammon Jul 28 '22 at 06:23
  • ‘Blanking’ is a good word, but would it refer to a continual state? My impression is that it usually refers only to individual instance(s). – gidds Jul 28 '22 at 09:36
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I'll reiterate what others have said about 'ghosting' being a relatively new term unknown by older generations, but also that your proposed usage misses some of its nuance. Ghosting implies a person completely removing themselves from another person's life abruptly, as if they've turned into a ghost. It generally implies that you don't even know whether they're alive or dead, because it's exactly the same from your perspective as if they had died (there are exceptions to this where you know it's a decision they made because they blocked you on various means of communication).

"His wife ghosted him although they lived in the same house" would imply to me that the wife had moved out without the husband's knowledge and just disappeared. There are examples of people doing this in real life (google "ghosted by my husband" for more), described exactly that way.

In other words, yes you can use that phrase, but it won't be understood by everyone, and it means something different and more extreme to what you intended. If made clear in context that you were only referring to communication it could possibly be used, but "the silent treatment" already covers exactly that scenario.

llama
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I'm going to disagree with many people on here. I think saying that his wife "ghosted" him is a humorous way of saying she stopped talking to him. I think it totally makes sense to a young audience. However, if these are not the things you are going for then avoid the term.

Joemoor94
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