Gaunt means unnaturally thin in a way that looks unhealthy or worrying. When someone appears gaunt, their face looks hollow, their cheekbones stick out sharply, and they seem almost skeletal. You might see a gaunt appearance in someone who has been seriously ill, hasn't eaten enough for a long time, or has endured extreme hardship.

The word carries a sense of concern rather than simple description. While “thin” or “slender” can be neutral or even positive, gaunt suggests something is wrong. A character in a novel who emerges from a dungeon after months of imprisonment might look gaunt and weak. A tree standing alone on a windswept hillside, stripped of most of its branches, might be described as gaunt.

The word can also describe places or things that look bare and bleak. A gaunt landscape is one that seems empty and unwelcoming, perhaps a desert with scattered dead trees or a rocky mountainside with little vegetation. In this sense, gaunt captures the feeling of something being worn down, depleted, or stripped to its bare essentials.