dumpy
/ˈdʌmpi
/adjective (dumpier, dumpiest)
(Of a person) short and stout: her plain, dumpy sister...
- A few seconds later a short, dumpy woman cautiously opened the door.
- A short dumpy woman appeared from behind the counter.
- Take them off, and it's like removing your espadrille wedges when you're wearing a smock dress (one minute, you're striking stork woman; the next, dumpy peasant girl).
Synonyms
short, squat, stubby;
plump, stout, chubby, chunky, portly, paunchy, corpulent, fat, bulky, broad, broad in the beam, well covered, well padded, well rounded
informal tubby, roly-poly, pudgy, porky
British informal podgy, fubsy
North American informal zaftig
archaic pursy
Derivatives
dumpily
- A middle-aged plump woman plodded dumpily through from the adjoining room and peered through her string-held glasses, curiously but as positively as she could muster.
- Chubby - okay, fat - fortyish, dumpily attired, pretty much all this guy is missing is one of those hats with a propeller on top of it and a lunchbox packed by mom.
- Whether or not the trend of dressing up baby started in Hollywood, there's no denying the highly visible bambinos of celebrities pictured in magazines or on TV are never dumpily dressed.
dumpiness
/ noun ...- The defects include a loss of mechanosensation, for which the gene was named; aberrant chemosensation; a slight dumpiness in the body; and a partially penetrant cold-sensitive embryonic lethality.
- The present strategy is to use this Kantian account in order to ground a wider category of the aesthetic, which includes judgments of taste along with judgments of daintiness, dumpiness, delicacy, elegance, and the rest.
- Perhaps most impressively, his dumpiness doesn't look out of place next to this actress, who plays his quietly enabling fiancée.
Origin
Mid 18th century: from dumpling + -y1.
Dumpy ‘short and stout’ is from dumpling (early 17th century) which is apparently from the rare adjective dump ‘of the consistency of dough’.