gaunt
adjective
extremely thin and bony; haggard and drawn, as from great hunger, weariness, or torture; emaciated.
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gaunt
1 American
[gawnt]
/ gɔnt /
adjective
-
gaunter,
comparative
-
gauntest
superlative
Gaunt
2
American
[gawnt, gahnt]
/ gɔnt, gɑnt /
noun
gaunt
British
/ ɡɔːnt /
adjective
-
bony and emaciated in appearance
-
(of places) bleak or desolate
Synonym Usage
See thin.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of gaunt
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”
Explanation
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.
Vocabulary lists containing gaunt
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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:
Among one group of women and children we met Aisha, gaunt and elderly and sitting on the ground.
From BBC ● Oct. 12, 2026
The earl of Arundel’s tomb expresses the grim realities beneath the era’s facade of chivalry: Above, he is depicted resplendent in full armor; below, as a gaunt cadaver.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 11, 2026
Nitibhon, a Thai supermodel, plays her tycoon as comically drab, keeping her gaunt cheeks slack to emphasize her character’s hollowness.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 4, 2026
Other prisoners have appeared gaunt and almost unrecognisable.
From Barron's ● Oct. 21, 2025
Though her hair had been piled up, her skin still appeared lightly gray and sickly, her features human but gaunt.
From "Night Owls" by A.R. Vishny
There’s a healthy place for AI in business communications, Gaunt says: crisis communicators can use it as a “devil’s advocate” when evaluating approaches or stress-testing strategies.
From Barron's ● Apr. 14, 2026
Faced with what he describes as a "relentless" onslaught of shoplifting incidents, shopkeeper Martin Gaunt says he has carried out more than 50 citizen's arrests in the last two years.
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
Gaunt, hopeless cows stood unmilked in the field.
From "The Teacher’s Funeral" by Richard Peck
For the last two-thirds of the film we mainly follow the wanderings of Garfield’s Father Rodrigues, who grows ever gaunter, more ragged, and more spiritually bereft.
From Slate ● Dec. 22, 2016
Bob Dole's cranky bombast suggests a gaunter Foghorn Leghorn.
From Time Magazine Archive
After a month of illness in Lahore, Jinnah recently returned to Karachi, gaunter than ever.
From Time Magazine Archive
Now it was Lind say, gaunter and grayer after. four years of grappling with crises, who seemed like a man on the defensive.
From Time Magazine Archive
Ichabod stood up, seemingly longer and gaunter than ever before.
From A Breath of Prairie and other stories by J. N. Marchand
One part of the lane he could see plainly, and into it stalked Joel Creech, leading the leanest and gauntest ponies Slone had ever seen.
From Wildfire by Zane Grey
It will be the rawest, gauntest, ungainliest brute that ever scared the motor-bicycles on the Northampton Road.
From The Research Magnificent by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
At last even the gauntest of them filled up and left the room and we were free to sit at "the second table" and eat, while the men rested outside.
From A Son of the Middle Border by Hamlin Garland
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
