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shrunken

UK/ˈʃɹʌŋkən/US/ˈʃɹʌŋkən/
adjectiveB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,217 of 15,258neutral

Shrunken means made smaller by drying or by age. A shrunken face, shrunken jumper, shrunken and frail.

It is the old past participle of shrink and it survives as an adjective where shrunk does the verb's work — a jumper has shrunk and is shrunken. Of a person it suggests age and loss. Note pre-shrunk fabric, which has been shrunk deliberately before sale so it will not do it again.

Definitions of shrunken

  1. 1adjectiveshrunkenMade smaller by drying or by age.B2+

    “The old apples in the cellar were shrunken and wrinkled.”

shrunken is a quality of reduction.

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

shrunken in the wild

  • Jivaroan peoples, which includes the Shuar, Achuar, Huambisa and Aguaruna tribes from Ecuador and Peru, are known to keep shrunken human heads.

    Shrunken head

  • Burton Dassett is a parish and shrunken medieval village in the Stratford-upon-Avon district of Warwickshire, England.

    Burton Dassett

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.