flabby

Etymology

It is an expressive alteration from English of flappy,^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]} which is formed from flap and -y.^[2][3][8] The OED holds that the voiced b gives the syllable a feebler effect, suited to the meaning.^[2] It compares Dutch flabberen (“of a breeze, to flutter”) and Swedish dialect fläbb (“the hanging underlip of an animal”),^[2] and Collins compares Dutch flabbe (“drooping lip”).^[9] Dictionary.com also compares Middle English flabband, found once, in the “Wars of Alexander”,^[7][10] which the Middle English Dictionary tentatively glosses as flapping.^[10] Johnson derived the word from Latin flaccidus,^[11] and Skeat took it as a weakened form of floppy.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

Hanging loose and soft, said chiefly of flesh: the first record is in Dryden's translation of Virgil's Georgics (1697),^[2][8] though Merriam-Webster Unabridged gives 1694.^[4] The earlier flappy had this sense in Florio's dictionary of 1598.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Johnson (1755) defines it as soft, not firm, easily shaking or yielding to the touch, and quotes Arbuthnot on flabby and black flesh as a symptom of weak fibres.^[11] By the late 18th century it had been extended from flesh to language and character that lacked backbone or vigour.^[2][5] A use for damp or clammy things, which the OED compares with slabby, appeared at about the same time and is now rare.^[2][5] It also came to describe a person who is overweight.^[5][9] The noun flab, a back-formation, followed in 1923.^[8]

Timeline

• 1697 – of flesh, hanging loose, flaccid, limp.^[2][8] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates this sense to 1694.^[4]
• c. 1780 – damp, clammy.^[2]
• 1793 – of language or character, weak, wanting backbone.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of flesh or muscle, soft and slack, lacking firmness; flaccid: His arms had gone flabby over the winter.^[4][9]
2. Of a person, carrying soft excess flesh; overweight.^[9][5]
3. Lacking force or vitality; weak, feeble, ineffectual: a flabby defence of the policy.^[9][4][2]
4. (rare) Damp, clammy.^[5][2]

Word family

• flabbily
• flabbiness
• flab

Related words

• flappy
• flap

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
8. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
9. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
11. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press