gaunt

Meaning

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

Opposite of

scrawny, thin, emaciated, anorexic, starved, willowy, slender, strapping

Synonyms

lean

thin

skinny

emaciated

dismal

miserable

sad

☹️

meager

slender

skimpy

haggard

dreary

scrawny

bleak

somber

bony

desolate

cadaverous

gloomy

lank

wasted

wan

spare

barren

skeletal

drawn

rawboned

pinched

angular

bare

blear

desert

🏜️

deserted

few

🤏

lanky

meagre

mournful

poor

ravenous

scanty

scarce

slim

sparse

stark

sullen

waste

nasty

obscure

pale

pallid

Translations

maigre

magro

émacié

hager

flaco

öde

mager

demacrado

étique

mager

angulaire

désert

🏜️

schraal

morne

verlassen

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ɡɔːnt/

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English: gawnt

Cognate with Icelandic: gandur

Cognate with Norwegian: gand

Cognate with Danish: gand

Cognate with Norwegian: gana

Cognate with Bavarian: Gunten

Cognate with Old English: gūþ

Cognate with Latin: dēfendō

Cognate with Swedish: gank

In summary

From Middle English gaunt, gawnt, gawnte, gant (“lean, slender, thin, gaunt”); further etymology uncertain. Speculated origins include:
* from a North Germanic/Scandinavian source related to Old Norse gandr (“magic staff; stick”) (the ancestor of Icelandic gandur (“magic staff”) and Norwegian gand (“thin, pointed stick; tall, thin man”)), from Proto-Germanic *gandaz (“stick; staff”). Other suggested Germanic cognates include Swedish gank (“(dialectal) lean, emaciated horse”); Danish gand, gan, Norwegian gana (“cut-off tree limbs”); Bavarian Gunten (“kind of peg or wedge”). These words have all been connected to *gunþiz (“battle”) or its ultimate source, but this comparison presents semantic and phonetic difficulties.
* from Old French:
** The NED/OED (1900) suggests it could be a "graphic adoption" of Old French gant, a variant spelling of gent (“elegant; nice, pleasant; noble”) modern French gent), from Latin gēns (“clan, tribe; country, nation; family; people”), from Proto-Italic *gentis, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵénh₁tis, from the root *ǵenh₁- (“to produce, to beget, to give birth”). (It could not be an oral borrowing since the Old French word started with [dʒ], not [ɡ], due to the patalization of Latin "ge"; compare jaunty from French gentil.) If this etymology is correct, the early, now-obsolete positive or neutral sense 4.1 ("slender") was apparently original.
** Spitzer 1944 argues it is more likely to be from the Norman version of Old French jau(l)net (“yellowish”), diminutive of jaune (“yellow”), from Latin galbinus (the palatalization of Latin "ga" did not occur in northern French dialects).