Other forms: haunted, haunting, haunts
To haunt is what a ghost is said to do to a house, and what a bad memory does to a mind. A haunted house, haunted by it, it haunts me.
The figurative sense is much the commoner in serious writing: haunted by the decision, the image haunted him for years. As a noun, a haunt is a place somebody visits often — his old haunts — which has nothing to do with ghosts. Note haunting, which as an adjective means beautiful in a way that stays with you: a haunting melody.
1verbhauntTo appear repeatedly in a place, as a ghost is said to.
“The house has been haunted since about 1740, according to the sign.”
2verbstayTo stay troublingly in somebody's mind.
“That decision haunted him for about thirty years.”
3nounvisitsA place somebody visits often.
“This little café was one of my favourite haunts when I was a student.”
haunt is a lingering presence.
Old French hanter meant to frequent a place, and it probably comes from a Norse verb meaning to bring home. The word meant visiting regularly for four hundred years before ghosts got hold of it.
Proto-Indo-European
*ḱey-
Proto-Germanic
*haimatjaną — to house, bring home
Old English
hāmettan — to bring home; house; cohabit with
Old Norse
heimta — to bring home, fetch
fro-nor
hanter — to go back home, frequent
Old French
hanter — to inhabit, frequent, resort to
Middle English
haunten — to reside, inhabit, use, employ
English, today
haunt
From Middle English haunten (“to reside, inhabit, use, employ”), from Old French hanter (“to inhabit, frequent, resort to”), from fro-nor hanter (“to go back home, frequent”), from Old Norse heimta (“to bring home, fetch”) or/and from Old English hāmettan (“to bring home; house; cohabit with”); both from Proto-Germanic haimatjaną (“to house, bring home”), from Proto-Germanic haimaz (“village, home”), from Proto-Indo-European ḱóymos (“village”). Cognate with Old English hǣman (“to cohabit, lie with, marry”); related to Old English hām (“home, village”), Old French hantin (“a stay, a place frequented by”) from the same Germanic source. Another descendant from the French is Dutch hanteren, whence German hantieren, Swedish hantera, Danish håndtere. More at home.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA