emaciate
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of emaciate
1640–50; < Latin ēmaciātus, wasted away, equivalent to ē- e- 1 + maciātus, past participle of maciāre to produce leanness ( maci ( ēs ) leanness + -ātus -ate 1 )
Explanation
To emaciate is to make someone extremely thin or very weak. A serious illness can often emaciate a person, leaving them gaunt and frail. The verb emaciate is much less common than its related adjective, emaciated. Both stem from the Latin emaciare, "make lean, cause to waste away." Whenever a person has become malnourished in a way that's evident just from looking at them, you can use this word: "The ravages of the Irish potato famine emaciated the starving people all across the country, eventually causing a million deaths."
Vocabulary lists containing emaciate
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.
See Examples For:
Did it struggle frail and frailer to a beam emaciate?
From Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses by Thomas Hardy
But such a march as this, of woe-begone, emaciate, skeleton bands, is not to be counted as among war's pomps and glories.
From David Crockett His Life and Adventures by John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
His frame was emaciate in the extreme from the prodigious toils which he had endured.
From Harper's New Monthly Magazine Vol. IV, No. 19, Dec 1851 by Various
As the fugitives from France, emaciate, pale, and woe-stricken, with tattered and dusty garb, recited in England, Switzerland, and Germany the horrid story of the massacre, the hearts of their auditors were frozen with horror.
From Henry IV, Makers of History by John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
They thought they must emaciate their bodies with watching, fasting, toil, and hunger.
From Luther Examined and Reexamined A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation by W. H. T. (William Herman Theodore) Dau
The United States had called for Rivera's release after the government published photos of the visibly emaciated detainee hooked up to a ventilator.
From Barron's ● Jun. 8, 2026
"It helped the story to see an emaciated body. With Reuben, I just wanted to feel the character in the body and feel physically imposing opposite Jamie."
From BBC ● Apr. 21, 2026
And while Rahman, 60, has on occasion been the de-facto chair of an emaciated BNP when his mother was jailed and more recently when she was ill, he's largely seen as an untested leader.
From BBC ● Feb. 13, 2026
Officers searched him and found two emaciated and potentially sedated orange-fronted parakeets — the victims of an alleged botched smuggling attempt — stuffed in his underwear, according to court documents.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 30, 2026
Some are distempered out of all reason and nature, and grasp at all who go by with hands emaciated by the deprivations of fever.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
All those terrible yellow toxins, wizening his knees, slackening his tendons, emaciating his calves.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 1, 2011
The agitators proclaim that their number in Parliament has diminished, and that they have lost cities and counties, because the constituency has decreased under the "emaciating influence of the registration law."
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 by Various
That their plunge might stimulate Methuen to burn his boots and brave the turgid waters of the Modder, was the fervent wish of Kimberley at the end of fourteen weeks of irksome, emaciating duress.
From The Siege of Kimberley by T. Phelan
After an emaciating period he began once more to stouten.
From The Card, a Story of Adventure in the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett
A lipoma, or fatty tumor, in the subcutaneous tissue, may go on increasing to huge bulk while the body is steadily emaciating.
From Special Report on Diseases of Cattle by United States. Bureau of Animal Industry
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.
