Gaunt means thin and hollow-looking from hunger or illness. A gaunt face, gaunt and grey, look gaunt.
It is thinness with suffering in it, which is what separates it from slim or lean — nobody is gaunt from exercise. Of a building or a landscape it means bleak and bare. Note that the origin of the word is uncertain, despite several confident-sounding suggestions.
1adjectivegauntThin and hollow-looking from hunger or illness.
“After months in hospital, he looked gaunt and pale.”
gaunt is a quality of thinness.
Middle English gaunt means lean or slender. Its further origin is uncertain.
Proto-Indo-European
*ǵenh₁-
Middle English
gaunt
English, today
gaunt
Built from
From Middle English gaunt, gawnt, gawnte, gant (“lean, slender, thin, gaunt”); further etymology uncertain. Speculated origins include:
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA