: having excessive body fat

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 The advent of effective therapeutics for weight loss is heralded as momentous, particularly in light of the fact that more than 40% of the U.S. population is considered overweight or obese. Joshua Cohen, Forbes, 1 Mar. 2024 For some Americans who are obese but don’t have diabetes, obtaining those drugs has become difficult, if not impossible. Bryan Mena, CNN, 27 Feb. 2024 One in every five kids today is obese — that’s up from 1 in 20 kids just 35 years ago. Amanda C. Fifi, M.d., Miami Herald, 30 Jan. 2024 The researchers found that 2.1% of kids in the program were severely obese in 2010. Mike Stobbe, Fortune Well, 18 Dec. 2023 Women also are more likely than men to be obese, to be sleep deprived, and to be stressed: all of which are risk factors for heart attacks and other heart issues. Eva Epker, Forbes, 15 Feb. 2024 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the incidence of obesity has nearly tripled since 1960, when approximately 13% of American adults were considered obese. Bryant Stamford, The Courier-Journal, 1 Feb. 2024 Another option is bariatric surgery, most commonly gastric bypass, and it has been performed in morbidly obese pediatric patients since the 1980s. Amanda C. Fifi, M.d., Miami Herald, 30 Jan. 2024 Trump is 74 years old and clinically obese, putting him at higher risk of serious complications from a virus that has infected more than 7 million people nationwide and killed more than 209,000 people in the U.S. Christian Thorsberg, Smithsonian Magazine, 18 Jan. 2024

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'obese.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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

Time Traveler
The first known use of obese was in 1651

Dictionary Entries Near obese

Cite this Entry

“Obese.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obese. Accessed 18 Mar. 2024.

Kids Definition

obese

adjective
: very fat
obesity
ō-ˈbē-sət-ē
noun

Medical Definition

obese

adjective
: having excessive body fat : affected by obesity

More from Merriam-Webster on obese

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