malnourished

as in starving
not eating enough food or not eating enough healthy food; poorly nourished The malnourished children were slowly nursed back to health.

Related Words

Relevance

Dissimilar Words

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of malnourished Some of the most malnourished children are in the few hospitals still operating in Gaza, where doctors are scrambling for supplies of special therapeutic milks. Dawoud Abu Alkas, USA Today, 23 Aug. 2025 Doctors and nurses in Gaza in recent weeks have seen rising numbers of visibly malnourished patients. Sam Mednick, Chicago Tribune, 23 Aug. 2025 Restrictions from Israel and now the United States also affected how the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, an international organization with a local chapter in Milwaukee, can get medical supplies into the region and provide treatment to children who are malnourished or injured in the war. Bridget Fogarty, jsonline.com, 22 Aug. 2025 Many people — especially sick and malnourished children, older people and people with disabilities — may be unable to evacuate. Sarah Ferguson, Forbes.com, 22 Aug. 2025 See All Example Sentences for malnourished
Recent Examples of Synonyms for malnourished
Adjective
  • Factors like immune health and body fat play a role; if someone is already undernourished, their health will deteriorate quickly, after a few days without food.
    Angela Haupt, Time, 31 July 2025
  • Sticking with the example of hunger, the UN’s target number 2 out of 17, the inception of the Sustainable Development Goals came at a time when progress on the topic was good and only 552 million people in the world were estimated to be undernourished in 2014, down from 789 million in 2005.
    Katharina Buchholz, Forbes.com, 31 July 2025
Adjective
  • The freezing rain then traps lichen under a thick layer of ice where hungry reindeer can’t reach the food, according to Anna Skarin, a reindeer husbandry expert and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences professor.
    Jason Ma, Fortune, 7 Sep. 2025
  • These facilities, dense with high-performance servers and cooling systems, are among the most power-hungry assets in the country.
    Robert Rapier, Forbes.com, 7 Sep. 2025

Browse Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Malnourished.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/malnourished. Accessed 10 Sep. 2025.

More from Merriam-Webster on malnourished

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!