You can hold gaunt as flesh worn away until the frame underneath shows. Hollow cheeks, a sharp jaw, bare lines with nothing soft left over them. What matters is not that the thing is small, but that something has been stripped off it, and the stripping is what makes it hard to look at.
From the word’s history
The packet traces gaunt to Middle English gaunt, gant meaning lean, slender, thin, and says the route before that is uncertain. One suggestion recorded there links it to a Norse word family for a stick or staff, where Norwegian gand can also mean a tall, thin man. That link is speculation, not settled fact.
來源把 gaunt 追到中古英語 gaunt／gant（瘦、細），並註明更早的路線不確定。其中一個推測是它跟古北歐語「棍子、細長的杖」那一族有關，挪威語 gand 還能指又高又瘦的人。這條線索只是推測，來源自己也這樣標示；但「細長一根、沒有多餘」的畫面，和今天兩個意思都對得上。
Wiktionary (kaikki) entry for gaunt, source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:388322566:57901; the packet's own etymology_text marks the pre-Middle-English route uncertain.
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。
原始詞典資料8 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
Gauntname詞源 1
- 1
A surname.
gauntadj/ɡɔːnt/
- 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!
- 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.
- 3
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.
- 4
rareGreedy; also, hungry, ravenous.
- Gorg'd vvith our plunder, yet ſtill gaunt for ſpoil, / Rapacious G—d—n faſtens on our iſle; […]
- 5
obsoleteWith 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, […]
- 6
obsoleteOf 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.— […]
這個拼法也被記錄為下列字的變化形：
- Ghent
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。