Ending a relationship by suddenly cutting off all contact, with no warning or explanation.
Ghosting is the disappearing act as a breakup strategy. No "it's not working," no closure, no read receipt you'll ever get answered. One day there's a conversation; the next there's silence, and the silence is the message. It's most associated with dating apps, where matches are cheap and abundant and walking away costs nothing socially, but it happens with friends, family and even employers too.
The common misconception is that ghosting is always cruelty. Sometimes it is. But a lot of it is conflict-avoidance dressed up as convenience: the ghoster finds the honest three-line "I'm not feeling this" message harder to send than nothing at all. That doesn't make it painless for the person on the receiving end — the absence of a reason is exactly what makes it sting, because the brain fills the vacuum with worse stories than the truth usually was.
Where it actually shows up: the slow fade (replies get longer and colder until they stop), the hard ghost (mid-conversation, zero warning), and its sequels — "zombieing" and "submarining," when the ghost resurfaces months later with a breezy "hey stranger," as if the silence never happened. Naming the move is half of surviving it.