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

For those who are overweight or obese, medications known as glucagon-like peptide-1 agonists, or GLP-1s, have become very popular as weight loss treatments. —Joshua P. Cohen, Forbes, 2 Jan. 2025

The 1,232 participants in the current study had type 2 diabetes or risk factors such as smoking tobacco, high cholesterol and blood pressure, were overweight or obese and/or had a family history of heart disease. —Sandee Lamotte, CNN, 17 Dec. 2024

The Lancet study referred to at the beginning of this article projects that a staggering 81.1% of adult males and 82.1% of adult females will be overweight and obese by 2050. —New Atlas, 25 Dec. 2024

Overweight or obese cats are more exposed to the risk of diseases like cancer, diabetes mellitus, heart disease, hypertension, osteoarthritis and faster degeneration of affected joints, and urinary bladder stones, as well as anesthetic complications. —Josh Hammer, Newsweek, 24 Dec. 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