haggard

haggard, worn, careworn, pinched, wasted, cadaverous are comparable when they mean thin and drawn by or as if by worry, fatigue, hunger, or illness.

Haggard may imply a wild frightening appearance (as of a person driven distraught by fear, anxiety, privation, or suffering)

{

whose haggard eyes flash desperation— Cowper

}

{

the strong face to which that haggard expression was returning— Conrad

}

{

she stood at the door, haggard with rage— Joyce

}

but it usually also implies an extreme thinness or gauntness that is normally associated with age but that comes to younger persons who never know physical or mental ease

{

they grow thin and haggard with the constant toil of getting food and warmth— Anderson

}

Worn is the more accurate word for the latter sense of haggard, for it definitely implies the attrition of flesh characteristic of senility and induced in younger persons by overwork, worry, exhaustion, or prolonged ill health

{

the President . . . looked somewhat worn and anxious, and well he might— Dickens

}

{

it was easy to see from their worn and anxious faces that it was business of the most pressing importance which had brought them— Doyle

}

Careworn differs from worn chiefly in its implication of a being overburdened with cares and responsibilities that cause anxiety

{

the young mother's careworn face

}

{

years of heavy responsibility have changed him to an old careworn man

}

{

that lean and careworn look which misery so soon produces— Trollope

}

Pinched and wasted suggest the effects of privation or of a wasting disease

{

pinched faces of poorly nourished children

}

{

the wasted body of a con- sumptive

}

{

thought he looked pinched and cold— Carter

}

Cadaverous is often used in place of pinched or wasted when there is the intent to suggest the appearance of a corpse; it usually implies a deathly paleness and an extreme emaciation so that the skeleton is apparent though not visible

{

he has a cadaverous countenance, full of cavities and projections— Irving

}

{

for a queer second I did see us all in that. . . mirror . . . cadaverous, palsied— L. P. Smith

}

Analogous words: gaunt, scrawny, skinny, *lean: fatigued, exhausted, wearied, fagged, jaded (see TIRE vb): wan, pallid, ashen, *pale

Contrasted words: *vigorous, lusty, energetic, strenuous