Etymologically
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obesity

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Pronunciation

  • /oʊˈbɛzɪti/[1]
  • UK: /ə(ʊ)ˈbiːsɪti/[1]
  • US: /oʊˈbisɪti/[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French obésité (recorded in French in 1550) and partly directly Latin obēsitās (“fatness, stoutness”),[2][3][4][5] a noun formed on obēsus (“fat, stout, plump”) with the suffix -tās.[2][6][7] The Latin adjective meant literally “that has eaten itself fat”: it is the past participle of obedō (“to eat away, devour”), from ob- (“about, over”) and edō (“to eat”),[3][4][6] although the OED notes that this compound verb is not otherwise attested.[2] Etymonline traces the simple verb to Proto-Indo-European *h₁ed- (“to eat”), the root of eat.[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The condition of being extremely fat: 1611, spelt obesitie, in Randle Cotgrave's French–English dictionary.[2][4] Etymonline dates the word to the 1610s and Merriam-Webster to about 1611.[3][6]

Semantic evolution

The noun is older than its adjective: obese is first recorded in 1651,[2][4] and Barnhart and Etymonline take it partly as a back-formation from obesity;[4][3] the OED notes that the adjective was rare before the 19th century.[2] Johnson (1755) defined obesity as morbid fatness, quoting Nehemiah Grew's Cosmologia Sacra on the diseases that depend on it.[8] Merriam-Webster now defines it as a bodily condition marked by excessive deposits of fat,[6] and the OED also records an extended use for things other than the body.[2]

Timeline

  • 1611 – obesitie, in Cotgrave's dictionary.[2][4]
  • 1651 – the adjective obese.[2][4][6]
  • 1755 – Johnson defines it as morbid fatness.[8]
  • 1902 – the OED's first edition gives a pronunciation with a short e, /əʊˈbɛsɪtɪ/.[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. The condition of being very fat or overweight, with an excessive store of body fat.
  2. (extended use) Excessive size or bulk in something other than the body: the obesity of the new tax code.

Word family

  • antiobesity

Usage notes

The OED's first edition (1902) gave the pronunciation with a short e (/əʊˈbɛsɪtɪ/), and some early 20th-century American dictionaries, among them the Century Dictionary (1911) and Webster (1934), also recorded /-bɛ-/;[2] Daniel Jones's pronouncing dictionaries, from 1913 on, recorded only /-biː-/, the usual pronunciation today.[2]

References

  1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  5. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  7. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  8. ^ 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.