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haunt

[hawnt, hahnt; for 10 also hant]

Example Sentences Origin

verb (used with object)

to visit habitually or appear to frequently as a spirit or ghost: to haunt a house; to haunt a person.

to recur persistently to the consciousness of; remain with: Memories of love haunted him.

to visit frequently; go to often: He haunted the galleries and bars that the artists went to.

to frequent the company of; be often with: He haunted famous men, hoping to gain celebrity for himself.

to disturb or distress; cause to have anxiety; trouble; worry: His youthful escapades came back to haunt him.

verb (used without object)

to reappear continually as a spirit or ghost.

to visit habitually or regularly.

to remain persistently; loiter; stay; linger.

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Haunt is one of our favorite verbs.

So is absquatulate. Does it mean:

to flee; abscond:

to introduce subtleties into or argue subtly about.

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noun

Often, haunts. a place frequently visited: to return to one's old haunts.

10.

Chiefly Midland and Southern U.S. and North England. a ghost.

Origin:
1200–50; Middle English haunten < Old French hanter to frequent, probably < Old Norse heimta to lead home, derivative of heim homewards; see home

Related forms

haunt·er, noun

Synonyms
3. frequent. 5. obsess, beset, vex, plague.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Link To haunt

Example Sentences

Like a returning ghost, a rash of mysterious abductions has come to haunt this country once more.

Your words will become official pronouncements that can come back to haunt you.

And, despite much talk of reform and transparency, they still haunt the commercial world.

EXPAND

Like a returning ghost, a rash of mysterious abductions has come to haunt this country once more.

Your words will become official pronouncements that can come back to haunt you.

And, despite much talk of reform and transparency, they still haunt the commercial world.

The black wolves that haunt scary stories would have been mere fiction were it not for domestic dogs.

Similar subconscious memories may haunt recovering addicts.

Haunt your enemies' rice paddies, then eat their skulls.

Such disputes could come back to haunt you at tenure-review time.

But his scrupulousness-if that is what it is-may return to haunt him.

Locals haunt the museums during those select times when there are no admittance fees.

The concern is that viruses and retroviruses will survive this cycle and come back to haunt us.

The site has become a popular weekend haunt for day trippers willing to squeeze through fences and scale rickety scaffolds.

These are the memories that haunt you during phone interviews.

Corruption scandals have returned to haunt the party.

Sewage-treatment plants are becoming a popular winter haunt for insect-eating warblers such as chiffchaffs.

We will walk without the spectre of hypocrisy to haunt our footfalls.

People who make sweeping statements about the future can see their words come back to haunt them.

Later you will mutter many words into your pillow, but those words will never come back to haunt you.

In many cases, as has been made clear, risk has come back to haunt the banking system.

His gloomy ghost is said to haunt both his family residence and the studio where he used to film the show.

There's only one question on my mind, one that will haunt me to my dying day.

Peter makes a decision out of spite that comes back to haunt him, big time.

Do not put anything in an email that you are afraid may come back to haunt you in today's litigious society.

It has left bitter memories that still haunt private-equity funds.

We will walk without the specter of hypocrisy to haunt our footfalls.

Intel, has come back to haunt the company in a big way.

There is absolutely no quality control which will haunt us come accredidation time.

He must hope the phrase will not return to haunt him.

And deliberately causing harm to others can obviously come back to haunt you.

Churchill and others made some poor decisions that have come back to haunt us today.

Rash promises made in opposition are coming back to haunt the government.

After all, the ads will haunt you for the life of the device.

It's unlikely that your messages will come back to haunt you, but the reality is, you never know.

Get rid of some of the materials and books if they only haunt your memory.

Whether the undergrad grades will still haunt you depends on the school.

The new faces of the comedy show gather at a post-rehearsal haunt.

Meet the menagerie of monsters that haunt the night and learn how certain traditions are rooted in ancient cultural practices.

Celebs have been known to haunt the terrace in the early morning hours for secret trysts, and frankly, you should do the same.

Otherwise any complaint will be viewed as an irritant that can come back to haunt you.

According to this theory, the unconscious mind carries imprints of the past that mercilessly haunt the present.

The images mesmerize you while you're looking at them and haunt you when you turn away.

Potentially, he said, people can overcome nightmares that haunt them repeatedly.

Because student loans can almost never be discharged in bankruptcy, defaulted loans can haunt students for a lifetime.

But they have a nasty habit of coming back to haunt the sender.

The deaths of many sick uranium workers and residents still haunt the area.

Instead of getting a fresh start after leaving jail, the site has started to haunt him.

Then the harsh realities of the job market come back to haunt me.

Death did not haunt the road again for more than a century.

And what you gossip about with an outsider may come back to haunt you if the job candidate reveals that you were the source.

These interactions and exchanges haunt him, and he can remember dialogue exactly.

Beggars with desperate eyes haunt cars at traffic lights.

Ethnic and social differences will continue to haunt the nation.

Any deal based on an outright lie will come back to haunt you.

The counterpart to hubris is that the mistakes of your first term come back to haunt you.

Such cases show how celebrities' willing participation can come back to haunt them if they transgress.

While low interest rates are fueling higher stock market multiples, this policy may haunt investors in the years ahead.

Now this decision has come back to haunt their successors.

We are so concerned about the now when it comes to debt that it is going to completely haunt us in the future.

Those voices are now coming back to haunt those that crushed them, and demanded that they were silenced.

The less the potential growth recovers, the more debts haunt the economy.

Japan's decision not to go to the wall for its territorial claims looks expedient, but it may come to haunt it in the long term.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

haunt (hɔːnt)

—vb
1.	to visit (a person or place) in the form of a ghost
2.	(tr) to intrude upon or recur to (the memory, thoughts, etc): he was haunted by the fear of insanity
3.	to visit (a place) frequently
4.	to associate with (someone) frequently

—n
5.	(often plural) a place visited frequently: an old haunt of hers
6.	a place to which animals habitually resort for food, drink, shelter, etc

[C13: from Old French hanter, of Germanic origin; compare Old Norse heimta to bring home, Old English hāmettan to give a home to; see home]

'haunter

—n

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

haunt

early 13c., from O.Fr. hanter "to frequent, resort to, be familiar with" (12c.), probably from O.N. heimta "bring home," from P.Gmc. *khaimat-janan, from *khaimaz- (see home). Use in ref. to a spirit returning to the house where it had lived perhaps was in P.Gmc., but it was

EXPAND

reinforced by Shakespeare's plays, and it is first recorded 1590 in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The noun meaning "spirit that haunts a place, ghost" is first recorded 1843, originally in stereotypical U.S. black speech. Haunts (n.) "place or places one frequents" is early 14c., from the verb.

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"Your child...may not call you or other people names.... Don't be tempted to gloss over this issue. You may be able to talk to yourself into not minding being called names, but this decision may come back to haunt you in later years. If you let a preschooler speak disrespectfully to you now, you'll have a much harder time of it when your child is a preteen and the issue resurfaces, which it is likely to do then."

-Lawrence Balter

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