skin and bones
Nothing but skeleton
Skin and bones describes extreme thinness—a body so emaciated that only skin covering the skeleton remains visible: After months of illness, he was nothing but skin and bones.
The phrase emphasizes alarming weight loss or malnourishment.
Sometimes reversed to bones and skin or varied as all skin and bones.
Of or like bones
- gauntLean from deprivation
- cadaverousResembling the deceased
- wastedUsed without good result
- haggardExhausted in appearance
scrawny · bony · shriveled · pinched · angular · spindly · withered · sunken
Lacking fat; incline
Lacking power or force
- fragileEasily broken or damaged
- delicateEasily broken or harmed
- feebleWeak and ineffective
- infirmWeak in body
debilitated · enfeebled · decrepit · vulnerable · shaky · unsteady · brittle · slight
Lacking adequate food
- undernourishedInsufficiently nourished
- starvingSuffering extreme hunger
- famishedIntensely, painfully hungry
- wastingUsing poorly, inefficiently
skeletal
Of or like bones
- gauntLean from deprivation
- cadaverousResembling the deceased
- wastedUsed without good result
haggard · scrawny · bony · shriveled · pinched · angular · spindly · withered · sunken · drawn
lean
Lacking fat; incline
gangly · spindly · twiggy · wiry · rangy · beanpole · knobby-kneed
weak
Lacking power or force
infirm · debilitated · enfeebled · decrepit · vulnerable · shaky · unsteady · brittle · slight · wispy
underfed
Lacking adequate food
- undernourishedInsufficiently nourished
- starvingSuffering extreme hunger
- famishedIntensely, painfully hungry
pallid
Unhealthily lacking color
peaked · ashen · pasty · jaundiced · sickly · ailing · unwell · unhealthy · failing · deteriorating
- appearance idiomsall dolled up, dolled up, done up, dressed to kill, dressed to the nines
- skinnythin, slim, slender, lean, skinny
- appetitehungry, hunger, starving, famished, ravenous