malnourished

adjective

mal·​nour·​ished ˌmal-ˈnər-isht 

-ˈnə-risht

: supplied with less than the minimum or an unbalanced amount of the nutrients or foods essential for sound health and growth : marked by malnutrition

When it comes to certain nutrients, in fact, an estimated 80 to 90 percent of obese individuals are malnourished.

—Maria Konnikova

especially : undernourished sense 1

How do you help malnourished children and assure that they won't go hungry again after you leave?

—Melissa Hendricks

Patients may become malnourished from being unable to take food by mouth …

—Laura Landro

Examples of malnourished in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The images from Gaza — of shattered cities, families killed together in their homes, malnourished children — do not often appear on the nightly news here. —William Booth, Washington Post, 6 Apr. 2024

Show more Nutrition screenings in Khan Younis in central Gaza determined that 28% of children under 2 years old are acutely malnourished, more than 10% of them with severe wasting, according to UNICEF. —NBC News, 16 Mar. 2024

Around 220,000 severely malnourished children and more than 7,000 new mothers could die in Sudan if urgent assistance doesn’t reach them in the coming months, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in an update Wednesday. —Pallabi Munsi, CNN, 19 Mar. 2024

The total number of acutely malnourished children is expected to have risen even higher in the days and weeks since the screenings occurred. —Sarah Ferguson, Forbes, 21 Feb. 2024

Leading its scraggly, malnourished crew is John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis from Persuasion), an English pilot with an irrepressible survival instinct. —TIME, 7 Feb. 2024

That dovetailed with an account given by an aid group, ActionAid, which said that a doctor at Al-Awda maternity hospital in northern Gaza had told the group that malnourished mothers were giving birth to stillborn children. —Aaron Boxerman, New York Times, 9 Mar. 2024

The woman wore filthy clothes, appeared malnourished and weighed about 70 pounds, the complaint said. —Cnn.com Wire Service, The Mercury News, 11 Jan. 2024

The jury also found Rodriguez guilty of not giving her stepson adequate food, leaving him malnourished. —Quinlan Bentley, The Enquirer, 10 Jan. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1911, in the meaning defined above

Kids Definition

malnourished

adjective

mal·​nour·​ished (ˈ)mal-ˈnər-isht 

-ˈnə-risht

: poorly nourished : undernourished

Medical Definition

malnourished

adjective

mal·​nour·​ished (ˈ)mal-ˈnər-isht, -ˈnə-risht 

: supplied with less than the minimum or an unbalanced amount of the nutrients or foods essential for sound health and growth : marked by malnutrition

When it comes to certain nutrients, in fact, an estimated 80 to 90 percent of obese individuals are malnourished.

—Maria Konnikova

especially : undernourished

How do you help malnourished children and assure that they won't go hungry again after you leave?

—Melissa Hendricks

Patients may become malnourished from being unable to take food by mouth …

—Laura Landro