shrunken

adjective

shrunk·​en ˈshrəŋ-kən 

ˈsrəŋ-

: reduced in size : made less or smaller

After he'd lost nearly thirty pounds, his shrunken face disclosed itself to us as a replica of my elderly grandmother's …

—Philip Roth

… I had … a closet filled with shrunken clothes I'd blasted in the dryer …

—Caitlin Moscatello

… minerals and salts are more and more concentrated in the shrunken stream as it evaporates under the southwestern Sun.

—Jonathan Weiner

A netbook is a laptop with a shrunken screen, an undersize keyboard and a processor that's so slow, you'd have laughed at it in 2007.

—David Pogue

Yet the reality is that the public finances are going to be in an even bigger mess and the economy more shrunken than in the economic crisis of 2008/09.

—Ross Clark

… millions of people are unable to afford mortgage payments on homes with shrunken values.

—Arthur Delaney

The shrunken national attention span that television has fostered will probably reduce significantly the readership for this massive biography …

—Harry F. Waters

Examples of shrunken in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Of course, most of these sanctimonious snore-mongers linger on in one shrunken form or another, still screaming obscenities and shaking their fists at the moon. —Howie Carr, Boston Herald, 28 June 2025

Still, for many of the players who were dominant during tennis’ defining era, today’s shrunken audiences are somewhat baffling, given the athleticism on display and the dizzying velocity of the aggro-baseliner game. —Anthony Crupi, Sportico.com, 27 June 2025

Federal immigration authorities say LA’s shrunken police force is now struggling to help control the large-scale riots rocking the city. —Mia Cathell, The Washington Examiner, 12 June 2025

Their shrunken state is from multiple passes near a larger galaxy that stripped them of stars, leaving a smaller, more compact object behind. —Phil Plait, Scientific American, 8 May 2025

Word History

Etymology

from past participle of shrink entry 1

First Known Use

15th century, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for shrunken

• drunken
• sunken