Ghosting

Origin

Before the digital age, severing ties with someone often involved difficult conversations or unanswered calls, but the early 21st century introduced a new, spectral form of departure. The term "ghosting" itself began to truly haunt the modern lexicon around the 2010s, perfectly capturing the eerie, unexplained disappearance of a person from another's life. Born from the easy anonymity of texting and dating apps, it described the chilling phenomenon where someone could simply vanish from all contact, leaving the other feeling as though they'd been interacting with a phantom. It quickly became the go-to shorthand for this distinctly modern, often painful, method of ending a connection.