• gaunt •
Pronunciation: gawnt • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: 1. Thin, angular, emaciated, haggard. 2. Desolate, bleak, forbidding, barren.
Notes: We read this word a lot but seldom hear it. The first sense applies to people and animals; the second, to landscapes. It comes with an adverb, gauntly, and a noun gauntness.
In Play: The first sense of today's word pops up in expressions like this: "The wolves were so gaunt you could see their ribs. Apparently, they had gone for days without food." The second sense emerges in this sort of sentences: "In winter the gardens were a gaunt simulacrum of themselves."
Word History: Today's Good Word seems connected to geese via gander. Its origin seems to be PIE ghans "goose", source also of English gander, which has cousins in all Germanic languages, like Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish gås, German Gans, and Dutch gans. Apparently, the N is a Fickle one. We find outcomes of the PIE word all around the IE languages: Sanskrit hamsah, Greek khen, Latin anser (originally hanser), Irish gé, Welsh gwydd, Scots Gaelic gèadh, Lithuanian žąsis, Russian gus', Polish gęś, and Ukrainian guska—all meaning "goose". (Let's all thank Eileen Opiolka for many contributions to the Agora, including splendid Good Word suggestions like today's.)
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