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

The share of obese Americans has grown from just 15% in 1980 to over 40% today. —Lauren Green, Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government, 25 Mar. 2025

Hidalgo County came in first overall, with the highest percentage of obese adults (45%) and physically inactive adults. —Angelica Stabile, Fox News, 20 Mar. 2025

The fastest-growing obese populations aren’t taking GLP-1s By 2050, the countries with the highest numbers of overweight or obese people will be China at 627 million, India with 450 million, and the United States with 214 million, according to the study. —Bruce Gil, Quartz, 4 Mar. 2025

The obese cohort was further stratified into individuals with low-, moderate-, and high-risk obesity. —New Atlas, 25 Feb. 2025

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

Rhymes for obese

• apiece
• aris
• assise
• caprice
• cerise
• decease
• decrease
• eyepiece
• facepiece
• handpiece
• headpiece
• increase

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