: 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
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
This summer, Ricks expects to sit through a few more meetings like this one, when his team will see results from studies testing the drug as a weight-loss treatment in people who are overweight or obese but don’t have diabetes. Alice Park, Time, 17 Apr. 2025 And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 40% of Americans are obese — and more than 10% have diabetes (most of whom have Type 2). Shannon Carroll, Quartz, 17 Apr. 2025 West Virginia is the country’s most obese state, followed by Mississippi and Arkansas, according to CDC data. Rachel Wolf, FOXNews.com, 15 Apr. 2025 The study also found that 31% of adults in McAllen are overweight, but not obese. Angelica Stabile, Fox News, 20 Mar. 2025 See All Example Sentences for obese

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

Browse Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Obese.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obese. Accessed 23 Apr. 2025.

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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