Definition

Noun Phrase: - A person who is extremely thin and emaciated: This phrase describes someone whose body lacks flesh and fat, making their bones visibly prominent under their skin. It emphasizes an unhealthy or severe state of thinness, often due to illness, malnutrition, or extreme weight loss.

Usage Examples

• Noun Phrase:
  • After his long illness, he was just skin and bones.
  • The rescued dog was skin and bones when we found him.
  • She had become skin and bones from not eating properly.

Advanced Usage

• Used as a predicate adjective following a linking verb (like or ).
  • The patient is skin and bones.
• Often used with intensifiers like , , or to emphasize the extreme condition.
  • The poor child was nothing but skin and bones.

Variants and Related Words

• Emaciated (adj): Abnormally thin or weak, especially because of illness or lack of food. (A more formal, medical term).
• Gaunt (adj): Lean and haggard, especially from suffering, hunger, or age.
• Scrawny (adj): Unattractively thin and bony.
• Skeletal (adj): Relating to or resembling a skeleton; extremely thin.

Synonyms

• Bag of bones: (Informal, idiomatic) A very thin person or animal.
• Walking skeleton: (Idiomatic) A person who is extremely emaciated.

Related Idioms

• All skin and bones: An emphatic variant of the main phrase.
  • He's all skin and bones; he needs to eat more.
• To be a shadow of one's former self: To be much thinner or weaker than before.
  • Since the operation, he's just a shadow of his former self. (This idiom is broader but can imply extreme thinness.)

Noun

1. a person who is unusually thin and scrawny