Adjacent Words

Gaunt definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

GAUNT
GAUNT'LET, n. A large iron glove with fingers covered with small plates, formerly worn by cavaliers, armed at all points.
To throw the gantlet, is to challenge; and
To take up the gantlet, is to accept the challenge.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: very thin especially from disease or hunger or cold; "emaciated bony hands"; "a nightmare population of gaunt men and skeletal boys"; "eyes were haggard and cavernous"; "small pinched faces"; "kept life in his wasted frame only by grim concentration" [syn: bony, cadaverous, emaciated, gaunt, haggard, pinched, skeletal, wasted]

Merriam Webster's

adjective Etymology: Middle English Date: 15th century 1. excessively thin and angular <a long gaunt face> 2. barren, desolate Synonyms: see lean • gauntly adverb • gauntness noun

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. 1 lean, haggard. 2 grim or desolate in appearance. Derivatives: gauntly adv. gauntness n. Etymology: ME: orig. unkn.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Gaunt Gaunt, a. [Cf. Norw. gand a thin pointed stick, a tall and thin man, and W. gwan weak.] Attenuated, as with fasting or suffering; lean; meager; pinched and grim. ``The gaunt mastiff.'' --Pope. A mysterious but visible pestilence, striding gaunt and fleshless across our land. --Nichols.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

1. If someone looks gaunt, they look very thin, usually because they have been very ill or worried. Looking gaunt and tired, he denied there was anything to worry about. = drawn ADJ 2. If you describe a building as gaunt, you mean it is very plain and unattractive. (LITERARY) Above on the hillside was a large, gaunt, grey house. ADJ: ADJ n

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. Lean, thin, lank, emaciated, meagre, slender, spare, attenuated.

Moby Thesaurus

acarpous, angular, arid, bare, barren, bleak, bony, cadaverous, celibate, childless, desert, deserted, desolate, dismal, drained, dreary, dried-up, dry, emaciated, exhausted, fallow, flat, flat-chested, fleshless, forbidding, forlorn, fruitless, gangling, gangly, gawky, gelded, grim, haggard, harsh, hostile, impotent, ineffectual, infecund, infertile, inimical, issueless, jejune, lank, lanky, leached, lean, lean-fleshed, lean-looking, meager, menopausal, nonfertile, nonproducing, nonproductive, nonprolific, pinched, rawboned, scraggy, scrawny, sine prole, skeletal, skinny, spare, spidery, spindling, spindly, stark, sterile, stern, sucked dry, teemless, thin, thin-bellied, thin-fleshed, twiggy, uncultivated, undersized, underweight, unfertile, unfriendly, unfruitful, unplowed, unproductive, unprolific, unsown, untilled, virgin, waste, wasted, without issue