obese

adjective

ō-ˈbēs 

: having excessive body fat

Synonyms

• blubbery
• chubby
• corpulent
• fat
• fleshy
• full
• gross
• lardy
• overweight
• plump
• podgy [chiefly British]
• portly
• pudgy
• replete
• roly-poly
• rotund
• round
• tubby

Examples of obese in a Sentence

providing medical treatment for obese patients

the basset hound was so obese that its stomach touched the floor

Recent Examples on the Web

Nearly 75 percent of our citizens are overweight or obese. —Web Golinkin, Forbes, 12 Dec. 2024

However, many obese people have levels of leptin that are too high. —Kelly Burch, Verywell Health, 3 Dec. 2024

In the United States alone, it’s estimated nearly 260 million Americans will be overweight or obese by 2050 unless policymakers take immediate action. —Sandee Lamotte, CNN, 2 Dec. 2024

Studies have shown that obese cats between the ages of 8 and 12 face a 2.8 times higher risk of mortality compared to their lean counterparts. —Yaakov Katz, Newsweek, 28 Nov. 2024

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").

First Known Use

1651, in the meaning defined above

Kids Definition

obese

adjective

ō-ˈbēs 

: very fat

obesity

ō-ˈbē-sət-ē

noun

Medical Definition

obese

adjective

ō-ˈbēs 

: having excessive body fat : affected by obesity