gaunt
Other forms: gauntly; gaunter; gauntest
The word gaunt means extremely bony or thin, often from weariness, suffering, or hunger. A place that is described as gaunt may look deserted, harsh, or just very plain.
A stark, desolate landscape may be described as gaunt: harsh, barren, seemingly lifeless. If a group of hikers get lost for weeks in such a wilderness, surviving with little food or warmth, they would likely start to look gaunt: haggard, perhaps a bit skeletal. When they spy a gaunt old fortress on a hilltop, they'd probably ignore the fact that it looks abandoned, gloomy, even forbidding, and knock on the door to seek help. Don't worry — the gaunt-faced woman inside the mansion turns out to be a lovely person, who offers warmth and refuge.
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very thin, especially from disease or hunger or cold
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bleak, barren, or desolate, as of a place
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Vocabulary lists containing gaunt
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The speaker of this poem, who is mourning a lost love, is visited in the night by a raven who speaks a single word: "Nevermore." Read the full text here. Click here to explore other works by Edgar Allan Poe.
Three young refugees — a Jewish boy fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939, a Cuban girl suffering under the Castro regime in 1994, and a Muslim boy trying to escape war-torn Syria in 2015 — make desperate journeys in search of freedom and safety.