bony and emaciated in appearance
(of places) bleak or desolate
See thin.
First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English, probably from Old French gaunet, jaunet “yellowish,” derivative of gaune, jaune “yellow,” from Latin galbinus “greenish-yellow”
The word gaunt means extremely bony or thin, often from weariness, suffering, or hunger. A place that is described as gaunt may look deserted, harsh, or just very plain. A stark, desolate landscape may be described as gaunt: harsh, barren, seemingly lifeless. If a group of hikers get lost for weeks in such a wilderness, surviving with little food or warmth, they would likely start to look gaunt: haggard, perhaps a bit skeletal. When they spy a gaunt old fortress on a hilltop, they'd probably ignore the fact that it looks abandoned, gloomy, even forbidding, and knock on the door to seek help. Don't worry — the gaunt-faced woman inside the mansion turns out to be a lovely person, who offers warmth and refuge.
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“The sentence construction ‘it’s not X, it’s Y’ is one of the biggest tells in AI,” Jeff Gaunt, founder of Gaunt Strategies, told Shaina.
From Barron's • Apr. 14, 2026
Mr Gaunt says the police "rarely if ever" attend when called - and the first thing they ask is if the criminal is "still on site".
From BBC • Dec. 16, 2024
Gaunt and weakened by cancer at 42, his father reached for the buttons on Kerr’s shirt, fiddled with them and said something about getting ready to catch the plane to their cabin in the woods.
From New York Times • Mar. 12, 2024
Gaunt men and “children, big-eyed and thin,” walked up and clutched the rabbi’s raincoat.
From Slate • Jan. 28, 2024
“Yes, that was Tom Riddle senior, the handsome Muggle who used to go riding past the Gaunt cottage and for whom Merope Gaunt cherished a secret, burning passion.”
From "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling
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.
