gaunt
UK/ɡɔːnt//ɡɔnt/
gaunt adjective: angular, bony, and lean.
Adjective
gaunt (comparative gaunter, superlative gauntest)
- Angular, bony, and lean.
- [H]e presented for the first time to Mannering his tall, gaunt, awkward, boney figure, attired in a threadbare suit of black, […]1815 February 24, [Walter Scott], chapter II, in Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and...
- Hanging from the beam, / Slowly swaying (such the law), / Gaunt the shadow on your green, / Shenandoah!1859 (date written), Herman Melville, “The Portent”, in Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], published 1866, →OCLC, stanza 1, page 11
- Unhealthily thin, as from hunger or illness: drawn, emaciated, haggard.
- Old Gaunt indeede, and gaunt in being olde: / VVithin me Griefe hath kept a tedious faſt. / And vvho abſtaines from meate that is not gaunt? / For ſleeping England long time haue I vvatcht, / VVatching breedes leaneneſſe, leaneneſſe is all gaunt: / The pleaſure that ſome fathers feede vpon / Is my...1595 December 9 (first known performance), [William Shakespeare], The Tragedie of King Richard the Second. […] (First Quarto), London: […] Valentine Simmes for Androw Wise, […], published 1597...
- VVhen once he [a horse]'s broken, feed him full and high: / Indulge his Grovvth, and his gaunt ſides ſupply.1697, Virgil, “The Third Book of the Georgics”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 105, lines...
- Of a place or thing: bleak, desolate.
- But all that night, waking or in my sleep, the same thoughts recurred and the same images retained possession of my brain. I had ever before me the old dark murky rooms—the gaunt suits of mail with their ghostly silent air—the faces all awry, grinning from wood and stone— […]1840 April – 1841 November, Charles Dickens, “Chapter the First”, in The Old Curiosity Shop. A Tale. […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1841, →OCLC, page 47–79
- Ready-money Mortiboy's parlour is a gaunt, cold room, with long, narrow windows, wire blinds, horsehair chairs, a horsehair sofa, red moreen curtains, and a round table with a red cover reaching to the floor.1872, [Walter Besant, James Rice], chapter 1, in Ready-money Mortiboy. A Matter-of-fact Story. […], volume I, London: Tinsley Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 3
- Greedy; also, hungry, ravenous.
- Gorg'd vvith our plunder, yet ſtill gaunt for ſpoil, / Rapacious G—d—n faſtens on our iſle; […]1747, [Tobias Smollett], Reproof: A Satire. […], London: […] W. Owen, […]; and M. Cooper, […], →OCLC, page 7, lines 123–124
- With a positive or neutral connotation: not overweight; lean, slender, slim.
- I know where a woman was got with child, and was ashamed at the matter, and went into a secret place, where she had no woman at her travail, and was delivered of three children at a birth. She wrung their necks, and cast them into a water, and so killed her children: suddenly she was gaunt again...1549 April 14 (Gregorian calendar), Hugh Latimer, “The Fifth Sermon Preached before King Edward [VI], April 5th, 1549.”, in The Sermons of the Right Reverend Father in God, and Constant Martyr of...
- [T]hey vvho feed overmuch, and deſire to be gant and ſlender, and vvithall, to be coſtive, ought to forbear drinking at meales, ſo long as they eat, but after meat they may drink moderatly. To drinke vvine upon an emptie ſtomacke faſting, is a nevv found deviſe lately come up, and it is moſt...1601, C[aius] Plinius Secundus [i.e., Pliny the Elder], “[Book XXIII.] The Medecines which Grapes Fresh and New Gathered doe Yeeld. […].”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Historie of the World....
- Of a sound: suggesting bleakness and desolation.
- To the shouting throng / My fancy hears a dismal voice reply, / Like the gaunt echo of a hollow tomb.— […]1814, [John Galt], “The Prophetess; a Tragedy. […]”, in The New British Theatre; a Selection of Original Dramas, Not Yet Acted, […], volume I, London: […] A[braham] J[ohn] Valpy [for] Henry Colburn...
Proper noun (1) capitalized: Gaunt
Gaunt (plural Gaunts)
- A surname.
Proper noun (2) capitalized: Gaunt
Gaunt
- Obsolete spelling of Ghent.
Examples of gaunt in a sentence
- He rose with difficulty; a tall, gaunt, terrible form, black and weird against the shining sea and the starry skies.1882, Ouida [pseudonym; Maria Louise Ramé], chapter VIII, in In Maremma […], volume I, London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC, page 211:
- The leafless trees were surging in the night-wind; their gaunt branches were waving grimly over her head.1887, Hall Caine, chapter XI, in A Son of Hagar: A Romance of Our Time […], volume II, London: Chatto and Windus, […], →OCLC, 3rd book (The...
- It will be the rawest, gauntest, ungainliest brute that ever scared the motor-bicycles on the Northampton Road.1915 September, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “The Boy Grows Up”, in The Research Magnificent, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: The...
- Freuding is gaunt and soft-spoken, with something of an aristocratic bearing.2025 December 1, Isaac Stanley-Becker, “The New German War Machine”, in The Atlantic:
Synonyms of gaunt
10 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Antonyms
- big-boned
- bulbous
- corpulent
- curvy
- Daniel Lambertish
- eurysome
- famine resistant
- gravitationally challenged
- horizontally challenged
- obese
10 more antonymsFewer antonyms
- rotund
- round
- spherical
- big as a house
- bloated
- blubbery
- fat as a cow
- fat as a pig
- gross
- lardy
Forms of gaunt
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | gaunter |
| superlative | gauntest |
| alternative form | gant |
| alternative form | gent |
| alternative form | ghent |
| alternative form | gont |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Gaunts |
Origin of gaunt
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...
English surname, variant of Gant.
Words formed from gaunt
Words that rhyme with gaunt
Questions about gaunt
- What does gaunt mean?
- Gaunt means angular, bony, and lean.
- How do you use gaunt in a sentence?
- He rose with difficulty; a tall, gaunt, terrible form, black and weird against the shining sea and the starry skies.
- What part of speech is gaunt?
- Gaunt can be an adjective or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce gaunt?
- Gaunt is pronounced /ɡɔːnt/ (UK).
Words near gaunt in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: gaunt (page history and authors); Gaunt (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-gaunt.ogg.
Cite this entry: “gaunt.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gaunt. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.