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

Less brown fat may help explain why some people with obesity can have lower body temperatures than those who aren’t obese, and why there has been a decline in average body temperature in the U.S. since the industrial revolution. —Christopher Damman, Discover Magazine, 12 Sep. 2024

Additional studies are needed, but this could open up a new type of weight loss option for people who are overweight or obese, but not suffering from diabetes. —Chris Morris, Fortune Well, 11 Sep. 2024

For nearly three years, the study followed more than 1,000 people who were overweight or obese and had prediabetes. —Alice Park, TIME, 4 Sep. 2024

The article highlighted the growing number of people considered obese and the efforts that Novo Nordisk was making to tap this lucrative market. —Ed Silverman Reprints, STAT, 8 Aug. 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