gaunt means angular, bony, and lean.
gaunt is pronounced /ɡɔːnt/.
Why “gaunt” is a great word
Excessively thin and angular, often to the point of appearing haggard or emaciated, or describing something as bleak and desolate. From Middle English gaunt, gawnt, gawnte, gant ("lean, slender, thin, gaunt"), of uncertain further origin, with speculated but unproven connections to a North Germanic source akin to Old Norse gandr ("magic staff; stick") or an Old French connection. Unlike "lank," which suggests a tall and wiry slenderness, or "rawboned," which evokes a large and ungainly frame, gaunt etches the contours of depletion: the hollowed cheeks of a famine portrait, a winter field stripped to cracked soil, a stone house standing doorless under a gray sky—a word that does not merely describe thinness, but bears witness to what has been worn away.
Etymology
From Middle English gaunt, gawnt, gawnte, gant (“lean, slender, thin, gaunt”); further etymology uncertain. Speculated origins include:
* from a North Germanic/Scandinavian source related to Old Norse gandr (“magic staff; stick”) (the ancestor of Icelandic gandur (“magic staff”) and Norwegian gand (“thin, pointed stick; tall, thin man”)), from Proto-Germanic *gandaz (“stick; staff”). Other suggested Germanic cognates include Swedish gank (“(dialectal) lean, emaciated horse”); Danish gand, gan, Norwegian gana (“cut-off tree limbs”); Bavarian Gunten (“kind of peg or wedge”). These words have all been connected to *gunþiz (“battle”) or its ultimate source, but this comparison presents semantic and phonetic difficulties.
* from Old French:
** The NED/OED (1900) suggests it could be a "graphic
adj
- Angular, bony, and lean.e.g.“[H]e presented for the first time to Mannering his tall, gaunt, awkward, boney figure, attired in a threadbare suit of black, […]”
- Unhealthily thin, as from hunger or illness: drawn, emaciated, haggard.
- Of a place or thing: bleak, desolate.
- Greedy; also, hungry, ravenous.
- With a positive or neutral connotation: not overweight; lean, slender, slim.
- Of a sound: suggesting bleakness and desolation.e.g.“To the shouting throng / My fancy hears a dismal voice reply, / Like the gaunt echo of a hollow tomb.— […]”
Words closest in meaning
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