Synonyms of cadaverous

cadaverous

adjective

kə-ˈdav-rəs 

1

as in pallid

lacking a healthy skin color

everyone always looks cadaverous in the winter

Synonyms & Similar Words

• pallid
• pale
• ashen
• paled
• pasty
• ashy
• wan
• doughy
• blanched
• sick
• lurid
• livid
• mealy
• sallow
• white
• waxen
• peaked
• sickly
• waxy
• anemic
• whitened
• untanned
• bloodless
• white-faced
• sallowish
• whey-faced

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

• red
• ruddy
• rosy
• sanguine
• florid
• glowing
• blooming
• flush
• rubicund
• pink
• full-blooded
• blushing
• flushed

2

as in gaunt

suffering extreme weight loss as a result of hunger or disease

a cadaverous cancer patient living out his final days with dignity and courage

Synonyms & Similar Words

• gaunt
• skeletal
• haggard
• emaciated
• bony
• starved
• starving
• lanky
• hungry
• scrawny
• thin
• skinny
• lank
• sinewy
• wasted
• undernourished
• underfed
• rawboned
• wizened
• withered
• scraggy
• famished
• spare
• shriveled

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

• healthy
• burly
• husky
• brawny
• beefy
• hearty
• hale
• fit
• corpulent
• fleshy
• fat
• plump
• rotund
• pudgy
• stocky
• obese
• chubby
• portly
• overweight
• heavyset
• thickset
• tubby
• flabby
• soft
• roly-poly

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of cadaverous

Die große Nacht im Eimer (The Big Night Down the Drain), made that year, depicts a figure of indiscernible age with a cadaverous pallor and yellow splotches, brandishing an oversized phallus beneath a soot-black veil. — Tessa Solomon, ARTnews.com, 30 Apr. 2026

As the hulking creature, the Australian star appears to have pale, cadaverous skin with lacerations across it and long, stringy hair. — Jack Smart, PEOPLE, 24 Oct. 2025

Plus, the kid isn’t dead either, as his flailing pale self that looks on the verge of the cadaverous pops out of the trunk Jack shoves him in. — Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire, 1 Sep. 2024

Moreover, keeping the cadaverous Biden in the White House is a daily reminder to the American people of the feebleness and anemia of the Democratic Party, which taints Harris by association. — Armstrong Williams, Baltimore Sun, 23 July 2024

Concluding that the medical students and obstetricians were causing puerperal fever in their pregnant patients by infecting them with cadaverous particles on their hands, Semmelweis instituted some harsh protocols. — Sabrina Sholts, Smithsonian Magazine, 12 Mar. 2024

Looking at that picture, the back of Biden's neck looks cadaverous. — Charles C. W. Cooke, National Review, 30 Oct. 2023

Then those cadaverous mistakes are doing them in and losing games. — Sportsday Staff, Dallas News, 25 May 2023

Or the way that Morticia, voiced by Charlize Theron in the most musical of aristocratic purrs, doesn’t just walk but glides around in her cadaverous skin-tight dress that drapes over the floor in trails that look like black silk octopus legs. — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 1 Oct. 2021