gaunt

adj

1. 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, […]”

   “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.”

2. 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 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.”

3. (figuratively)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— […]”

   “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.”

4. (figuratively, rare)Greedy; also, hungry, ravenous.

   “Gorg'd vvith our plunder, yet ſtill gaunt for ſpoil, / Rapacious G—d—n faſtens on our iſle; […]”

5. (obsolete)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, 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.”

6. (figuratively, obsolete)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.— […]”

name

1. A surname.
2. (alt-of, obsolete)Obsolete spelling of Ghent.