- past participle of draw.
drawn
Americanverb
adjective
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tense; haggard.
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eviscerated, as a fowl.
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Glassmaking.
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of or relating to the stem of a drinking glass that has been formed by stretching from a small mass of molten metal left at the base of the bowl of the vessel.
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of or relating to glass that is drawn over a series of rollers as it comes from the furnace.
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adjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of drawn
First recorded in 1150–1200, for the adjective
Explanation
Drawn describes the look of someone who is tired, overworked, or ill. People will worry about you if your face looks drawn every morning because you stay up so late doing homework. The adjective drawn comes from the Old English verb dragan, which means to pull or to drag. Dragan is also the root for the artistic sense of the verb "draw," but drawn doesn't describe art. It can mean pulled closed, however. The drawn drapes keep your room so dark that it's always dark as night in there, which is good for sleeping, but bad when you have to get up early for school.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Drawn to the continuum of pregnancy, birth and parenting, she noticed a discrepancy in the literature.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 19, 2026
Drawn by high interest rates and relatively low numbers of defaults, Wall Street and other banks invested in lenders that started as charities or development projects.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 12, 2026
Drawn into underground communist politics as a teenager, he was 21 when arrested in 1973 for campaigning to overthrow the king.
From Barron's • Feb. 16, 2026
Managerial record: Played 334 Won 141 Drawn 87 Lost 107 Win percentage 42.2%
From BBC • Oct. 28, 2024
“Not exactly. He’s got his heart set on a cavalry charge. Drawn sabers, all that glorious French business. He was horrified when I had to tell him we didn’t use the British square.”
From "The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War" by Michael Shaara
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
