Meaning

Angular, bony, and lean..

Definitions by Sense

1. Angular, bony, and lean.
2. Unhealthily thin, as from hunger or illness: drawn, emaciated, haggard.
3. Of a place or thing: bleak, desolate.
4. Greedy; also, hungry, ravenous.
5. With a positive or neutral connotation: not overweight; lean, slender, slim.
6. Of a sound: suggesting bleakness and desolation.

Example Sentences

[H]e presented for the first time to Mannering his tall, gaunt, awkward, boney figure, attired in a threadbare suit of black, […]

Hanging from the beam, / Slowly swaying (such the law), / Gaunt the shadow on your green, / Shenandoah!

He rose with difficulty; a tall, gaunt, terrible form, black and weird against the shining sea and the starry skies.

The leafless trees were surging in the night-wind; their gaunt branches were waving grimly over her head.

It will be the rawest, gauntest, ungainliest brute that ever scared the motor-bicycles on the Northampton Road.

His actual, ambivalent-sounding title is inspector of the army. Freuding is gaunt and soft-spoken, with something of an aristocratic bearing.

Old Gaunt indeede, and gaunt in being olde: / VVithin me Griefe hath kept a tedious faſt. / And vvho abſtaines from meate that is not gaunt? / For ſleeping England long time haue I vvatcht, / VVatching breedes leaneneſſe, leaneneſſe is all gaunt: / The pleaſure that ſome fathers feede vpon / Is my ſtrict faſt; I meane my childrens lookes, / And therein faſting haſt thou made me gaunt: / Gaunt am I for the graue, gaunt as a graue, / VVhoſe hollovv vvombe inherites naught but bones.

VVhen once he [a horse]'s broken, feed him full and high: / Indulge his Grovvth, and his gaunt ſides ſupply.

Word Forms

• gaunter
• gauntest
• gant
• gent
• ghent
• gont

Synonyms for gaunt

Antonyms for gaunt

Related Words

When Should You Use Gaunt?

Use gaunt when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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