gaunt
Part of speech: adj
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: 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 to the palatalization of Latin "ge"; compare jaunty from French gentil.) If this etymology is correct, the early, now-obsolete positive or neutral sense 4.1 ("slender") was apparently original.
** Spitzer 1944 argues it is more likely to be from the Norman version of Old French jau(l)net (“yellowish”), diminutive of jaune (“yellow”), from Latin galbinus (the palatalization of Latin "ga" did not occur in northern French dialects).
Inflected forms:
form: gaunter
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: gauntest
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: gant
pos: adj
tags: alternative
form: gent
pos: adj
tags: alternative
form: ghent
pos: adj
tags: alternative
form: gont
pos: adj
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: Angular, bony, and lean.
pos: adj
examples: [H]e presented for the first time to Mannering his tall, gaunt, awkward, boney figure, attired in a threadbare suit of black, […]
Hanging from the beam, / Slowly swaying (such the law), / Gaunt the shadow on your green, / Shenandoah!
He rose with difficulty; a tall, gaunt, terrible form, black and weird against the shining sea and the starry skies.
The leafless trees were surging in the night-wind; their gaunt branches were waving grimly over her head.
It will be the rawest, gauntest, ungainliest brute that ever scared the motor-bicycles on the Northampton Road.
His actual, ambivalent-sounding title is inspector of the army. Freuding is gaunt and soft-spoken, with something of an aristocratic bearing.
gloss: Unhealthily thin, as from hunger or illness: drawn, emaciated, haggard.
pos: adj
examples: 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 ſtrict faſt; I meane my childrens lookes, / And therein faſting haſt thou made me gaunt: / Gaunt am I for the graue, gaunt as a graue, / VVhoſe hollovv vvombe inherites naught but bones.
VVhen once he [a horse]'s broken, feed him full and high: / Indulge his Grovvth, and his gaunt ſides ſupply.
[T]he gauntest of dogs trot in and out of the dullest of archways, in perpetual search of something to eat, which they never seem to find.
A gaunt Wolf was almost dead with hunger when he happened to meet a House-dog who was passing by.
Far away I saw a gaunt cat slink crouchingly along a wall, but traces of men there were none.
In the dim light of a foggy November day the sick-room was a gloomy spot, but it was that gaunt, wasted face staring at me from the bed which sent a chill to my heart.
For even as the flesh melted away from Pater Pan's gaunter and gaunter figure to the point where I marveled that he could yet sit upright, […] his eyes seemed to grow larger and more brilliant in their deepening sockets, one could almost perceive them glowing from within with the blue light of a brain that would now seem to be burning itself out in ecstasy.
Whatever the official cause of his is death is said to be—and [Alexei] Navalny, though gaunt, seemed in good spirits in a court hearing a day earlier—foreign leaders are rightly holding the Kremlin responsible.
gloss: Of a place or thing: bleak, desolate.
pos: adj
tags: figuratively
examples: 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— […]
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.
To blossom into rhyme on the sparkling pleasures of life, you must be under the influence of those pleasures, and I am at present quite removed from them—surrounded by gaunt realities of a very different description.
The present stage of progress in Christian Science presents two opposite aspects, a full-orbed promise, and a gaunt want; the need however is not of the letter, but the spirit.
Behind me, rose up, to an extraordinary height, gaunt, black cliffs.
These lines survive, but who now recalls a journey to Macmerry, or to Carmyllie, or spares a thought for the Solway Junction Railway with its gaunt and lonely viaduct?
gloss: Greedy; also, hungry, ravenous.
pos: adj
tags: figuratively
rare
examples: Gorg'd vvith our plunder, yet ſtill gaunt for ſpoil, / Rapacious G—d—n faſtens on our iſle; […]
gloss: With a positive or neutral connotation: not overweight; lean, slender, slim.
pos: adj
tags: obsolete
examples: 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, and her neighbours suspecting the matter, caused her to be examined, and she granted all: […]
[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 unholeſome for the bodie, […]
[O]ur friend began to amend, and he was quite well (though gaunt as a greyhound) before they reached the Cape.
gloss: Of a sound: suggesting bleakness and desolation.
pos: adj
tags: figuratively
obsolete
examples: To the shouting throng / My fancy hears a dismal voice reply, / Like the gaunt echo of a hollow tomb.— […]
Derived words: armgaunt
gaunted
gauntly
gauntness
Translations: