Etymologically
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obese

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Pronunciation

  • UK: /əʊˈbiːs/, /əˈbiːs/[1]
  • US: /oʊˈbis/[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin obēsus (“fat, stout, plump”),[2][3][4][5] literally "that has eaten itself fat", the past participle of a compound of ob- and edō (“to eat”);[6][4][7][8] the compound verb itself is otherwise unattested.[2] The Latin verb comes from Proto-Indo-European *ed- (“to eat”), the source of eat.[6][3] Etymonline and Barnhart take the English word as in part a back-formation from the earlier obesity (1611, from French obésité or Latin obēsitās).[6][9] Because the Latin participle could also be read as "eaten up", it was used too in a passive sense, "wasted away, lean";[6][10] Weekley compares the passive-active shift in drunk.[11] Italian had obeso from 1588 and French obèse only from 1825.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Very fat or fleshy: 1651, in N. Biggs's Matæotechnia Medicinæ, a medical work.[2][9][5]

Semantic evolution

The word was rare before the 19th century;[2][6][8] Johnson (1755) entered it, defined as "fat; loaden with flesh", but with no quotation.[12][2] Old English had rendered the Latin word as Old English oferfæt (“overfat”).[6] In 19th-century entomology it was used of parts that look swollen or distended (1826, now rare).[2] In modern medicine it has a precise meaning, having a body mass index of 30 or more,[2] and it is also used of things that are unusually large or bloated.[5][2] From 1915 the obese were obese people as a class, and since 1950 obese has also been the name of a mouse gene, later found to code for the hormone leptin.[2] In American college slang of the late 1990s obese meant excellent, a play on phat.[13]

Timeline

  • 1611 – obesitie, obesity, in Cotgrave's dictionary.[9]
  • 1651 – very fat, corpulent.[2][9][5]
  • 1755 – in Johnson's dictionary, without a quotation.[12][2]
  • 1826 – entomology, appearing distended.[2]
  • 1915 – the obese, obese people.[2]
  • 1950 – genetics, the obese gene in mice.[2]
  • 1997 – US college slang, excellent.[13]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Very fat; overweight to a degree that may harm health, in medicine having a body mass index of 30 or more.[14][5][2]
  2. Unusually large, bulky or swollen: a report obese with footnotes.[5][2]

Word family

  • obesely
  • obeseness
  • obesity
  • overobese
  • superobese
  • unobese

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q 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 Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  5. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  6. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  7. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  8. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  9. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  10. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  11. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  12. ^ 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.
  13. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  14. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins