Word.ws English Dictionary

sunken-eyed

sunken-eyed adjective: having eyes that appear as though they have retreated back into the sockets, especially as a result or fatigue, ill-health, ageing, trauma, etc.

Adjective

sunken-eyed (comparative more sunken-eyed, superlative most sunken-eyed)

  1. Having eyes that appear as though they have retreated back into the sockets, especially as a result or fatigue, ill-health, ageing, trauma, etc.
    • Otis was unfeignedly thankful to lay down his work for a little while and escape from the seething, whining, weakly hive, impotent to help itself, but strong in its power to cripple, thwart, and annoy the sunken-eyed man, who, by official irony, was said to be “in charge” of it.1889, Rudyard Kipling, “The Education of Otis Yeere”, in Under the Deodars, Boston: The Greenock Press, published 1899, page 29

Forms of sunken-eyed

comparativemore sunken-eyed
superlativemost sunken-eyed

Questions about sunken-eyed

What does sunken-eyed mean?
Sunken-eyed means having eyes that appear as though they have retreated back into the sockets, especially as a result or fatigue, ill-health, ageing, trauma, etc.
What part of speech is sunken-eyed?
Sunken-eyed is an adjective.

Words near sunken-eyed in the dictionary

  1. sunken featured building
  2. sunken featured buildings
  3. sunken in
  4. sunken lane
  5. sunken lanes
  6. sunken-eyed
  7. sunkenly
  8. sunkenness
  9. sunker
  10. sunkers
  11. sunkest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sunken-eyed (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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