providing medical treatment for obese patients
the basset hound was so obese that its stomach touched the floor
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Maintain a Healthy Weight PCOS raises the risk of having a body weight that is considered overweight or obese.—Peter Weiss, Verywell Health, 13 May 2025 The new study found that women with diverticulitis were more likely to be current or former smokers, report heavy alcohol use, and have a BMI classified as overweight or obese, compared with those without diverticulitis.—Sarah Garone, Health, 9 May 2025 The 2022 Health Survey for England estimated that men were more likely than women to be overweight or obese (67% of men compared with 61% of women).—Chloe Laws, Glamour, 9 May 2025 Nearly 7 in 10 U.S. adults are either overweight or obese, according to the Food Research & Action Center.—Omer Awan, Forbes.com, 8 Apr. 2025 See All Example Sentences for obese
Word History
Etymology
borrowed from Latin obēsus "fat, stout," past participle of *obedere, perhaps meaning originally "to gnaw," from ob- "against" + edere "to eat" — more at ob-, eat entry 1
Note:
Etymologically obēsus should mean "thin, emaciated," if the sense of the unattested verb *obedere was "to eat away, gnaw," as implied by its components. The Roman writer Aulus Gellius (Noctes Atticae 19.7.3) pointed this out and adduced a passage from the poet Laevius (who is known only from a handful of quotations from his works made by other authors), where the word apparently has the meaning "wasted." Presumably the word went reanalysis after the extinction of the verb. The grammarian Pompeius Festus construed the derivation phrasally as "made fat as if as a result of eating" ("pinguis quasi ob edendum factus").
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