gaunt
adjEtymology
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).
- derived from galbinus
- derived from *ǵénh₁tis✻
- derived from *gentis✻
- derived from gant
- inherited from gaunt
Definitions
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.
Unhealthily thin, as from hunger or illness
Unhealthily thin, as from hunger or illness: drawn, emaciated, haggard.
- 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.
Of a place or thing
Of a place or thing: bleak, desolate.
- 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.
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Greedy
Greedy; also, hungry, ravenous.
- Gorg'd vvith our plunder, yet ſtill gaunt for ſpoil, / Rapacious G—d—n faſtens on our iſle; […]
With a positive or neutral connotation
With a positive or neutral connotation: not overweight; lean, slender, slim.
- [O]ur friend began to amend, and he was quite well (though gaunt as a greyhound) before they reached the Cape.
Of a sound
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.— […]
A surname.
Obsolete spelling of Ghent.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
A definitional loop anchored at gaunt. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.
A definitional loop anchored at gaunt. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.
8 hops · closes at gaunt
curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA