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Gaunt vs Frail - What's the difference?

gaunt | frail |

As adjectives the difference between gaunt and frail

is that gaunt is lean, angular, and bony while frail is easily broken; mentally or physically fragile; not firm or durable; liable to fail and perish; easily destroyed; not tenacious of life; weak; infirm.

As a noun frail is

a basket made of rushes, used chiefly for containing figs and raisins.

As a verb frail is

to play a stringed instrument, usually a banjo, by picking with the back of a fingernail.

gaunt

English

Alternative forms

* (l) * (l) (Scotland)

Adjective

(er)
  • lean, angular and bony
  • * {{quote-book
    • , year=1894 , author=Joseph Jacobs , title=The Fables of Aesop , chapter=1 citation , passage=A gaunt Wolf was almost dead with hunger when he happened to meet a House-dog who was passing by.}}
  • haggard, drawn and emaciated
  • * {{quote-book
    • , year=1917 , author=Arthur Conan Doyle , title=His Last Bow , chapter=5 citation , passage=In the dim light of a foggy November day the sick room was a gloomy spot, but it was that gaunt , wasted face staring at me from the bed which sent a chill to my heart.}}
  • bleak, barren and desolate
  • * {{quote-book
    • , year=1908 , author=William Hope Hodgson , title=The House on the Borderland , chapter=14 citation , passage=Behind me, rose up, to an extraordinary height, gaunt , black cliffs. }}

    Synonyms

    * scraggy, scrawny, skinny

    frail

    English

    Adjective

    (er)
  • Easily broken; mentally or physically fragile; not firm or durable; liable to fail and perish; easily destroyed; not tenacious of life; weak; infirm.
  • Liable to fall from virtue or be led into sin; not strong against temptation; weak in resolution; unchaste.

    • Related terms

    * fractal * fraction * fractional * fracture * fragile * fragility * frailly * frailness * frailty

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A basket made of rushes, used chiefly for containing figs and raisins.
  • The quantity of raisins contained in a frail.
  • A rush for weaving baskets.
  • (dated, slang) A girl.
  • * 1931 , (Cab Calloway) / (Irving Mills), ‘Minnie the Moocher’:
    • She was the roughest, toughest frail , but Minnie had a heart as big as a whale.
  • * 1933 , , , edition 1, Book 2, Chapter XXII:
    • There were five people in the Quirinal bar after dinner, a high-class Italian frail who sat on a stool making persistent conversation against the bartender's bored: “Si ... Si ... Si,” a light, snobbish Egyptian who was lonely but chary of the woman, and the two Americans.
  • * 1939 , (Raymond Chandler), The Big Sleep , Penguin 2011, p. 148:
    • ‘She's pickin' 'em tonight, right on the nose,’ he said. ‘That tall black-headed frail .’
  • * 1941 , Preston Sturges, '', published in ''Five Screenplays , ISBN 0-520-05442-4, page 77:
    • Sullivan, the girl and the butler get to the ground. The girl wears a turtle-neck sweater, a cap slightly sideways, a torn coat, turned-up pants and sneakers.
    SULLIVAN Why don't you go back with the car... You look about as much like a boy as .
    THE GIRL All right, they'll think I'm your frail .

    References

    *

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To play a stringed instrument, usually a banjo, by picking with the back of a fingernail.

    • Anagrams

    *