gaunt1
/ɡɔːnt
/adjective
1(Of a person) lean and haggard, especially because of suffering, hunger, or age: a tall, gaunt woman in black...
- She was gaunt, painfully thin, expressionless, wearing a sleeveless top, dark pants, and sandals.
- Its twisted trunk and mangled branches resembled a terrifyingly gaunt person arching their back in immense agony.
- He is a fair, gaunt man of Norwegian extraction, an international lawyer I think, and has a careful, courteous manner.
Synonyms
haggard, drawn, cadaverous, skeletal, emaciated, skin-and-bones, skinny, spindly, thin, over-thin, size-zero, spare, bony, angular, lank, lean, raw-boned, pinched, hollow-cheeked, hollow-eyed, lantern-jawed, scrawny, scraggy, shrivelled, wasted, withered, raddled;
as thin as a rake, as thin as a reed, without an ounce of fat
informal looking like death warmed up, looking like a bag of bones
dated spindle-shanked
archaic starveling
1.1(Of a building or place) grim or desolate in appearance: gaunt tenement blocks...
- The tall buildings flickered with a glow of white, gaunt towers rising like obelisks in the night thrusting towards a heaven that would forever elude them.
- Wherever I played football, the huge gaunt stadium was always the touchstone of my career, the place where I came home to show my people that I could still do the job.
- He juxtaposes these gaunt scenes with striking black-and-white shots of beaches and landscape.
Synonyms
bleak, stark, barren, bare, drab, desolate, dreary, dismal, gloomy, sombre, forlorn, grim, stern, harsh, forbidding, uninviting, unwelcoming, cheerless
Derivatives
gauntly
- It starts with some poets, gauntly tubercular sorts with laudanum habits and loose-fitting shirts.
- The style is often lightly conversational, yet it is a gauntly powerful book.
- The figure at Dick's bedside seems initially different, as he wakes ‘to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at me gauntly’.
gauntness
/ noun ...- His face is thin nearly to gauntness, and covered with sad lines.
- He cocked his head and looked down at her, noting for the first time the shadows beneath her eyes, the gauntness of her cheeks.
- He looked up as we approached and I was momentarily shocked by the gauntness, the almost metallic grayness that dusted what had once been a tawny coat.
Origin
Late Middle English: of unknown origin.
Rhymes
Gaunt2
/ɡɔːnt/ Former name for Ghent.