fat
/fat
/noun
1 [mass noun] A natural oily substance occurring in animal bodies, especially when deposited as a layer under the skin or around certain organs: whales and seals insulate themselves with layers of fat...
- The changes are expected to enable the method to provide accurate readings that are unaffected by skin color or body fat.
- Not much hair, we don't hibernate, and only in the age of super-sizing have we learned to put on a truly impressive layer of body fat.
- This outer layer of body fat provides insulation from low temperatures.
Synonyms
fatty tissue, fat cells, blubber, adipose tissue
1.1A fatty substance made from animal or plant products, used in cooking: sizzling fat [count noun]: a diet high in animal fats...
- That being done, the flesh was raked into small shreds and blended with the warm cooking fat to form a rustic paste.
- When the skillet is hot, add enough oil or other cooking fat to thinly coat the bottom of the pan.
- Butter has a lower melting point than hard white fats such as lard and hardened vegetable cooking fat.
Synonyms
cooking oil, animal fat, vegetable fat, grease;
lard, suet, butter, margarine
1.2The presence of excess fat in a person or animal: he was a tall man, running to fat...
- People who carry more weight around their waistlines are at greater health risks than individuals who carry their excess fat in the hips and thighs.
- He was six foot one, and he never went to fat the way a lot of other policemen did.
- These supplements should be mainstays for any guy looking to add bulk while keeping off fat.
Synonyms
fatness, plumpness, stoutness, heaviness, chubbiness, tubbiness, portliness, rotundity, podginess, flabbiness, bulk, excessive weight;
obesity, corpulence, grossness;
paunch, pot belly, beer belly, beer gut
informal flab, blubber, beef
2 Chemistry Any of a group of natural esters of glycerol and various fatty acids, which are solid at room temperature and are the main constituents of animal and vegetable fat: some 40 per cent of our daily calories are derived from dietary fats...Compare with oil.
- Sucrose is also the basic plant biochemical building block, and can be converted to proteins, fats, and organic acids.
- The energy that every body needs is derived from carbohydrates, proteins, and fats.
- Whole-wheat foods also contain high levels of healthy monounsaturated fats, protein and B vitamin.
adjective (fatter, fattest)
1(Of a person or animal) having a large amount of excess flesh: the driver was a fat wheezing man...
- The link between the daily traffic jams outside schools and the bored, fat teenagers in the people carriers seemed to escape the members of the obesity taskforce.
- I ate 20 nuggets and a chicken sandwich meal and Rob kept on throwing things at me and calling me a fat pig.
- She was sitting between a fat man who wheezed a lot and a woman who definitely overdid the perfume.
Synonyms
plump, stout, overweight, heavy, large, solid, chubby, portly, rotund, flabby, paunchy, pot-bellied, beer-bellied, dumpy, meaty, broad in the beam, of ample proportions, Falstaffian;
buxom;
obese, morbidly obese, corpulent, bloated, gross, gargantuan, elephantine;
fleshy
informal tubby, roly-poly, beefy, porky, blubbery, poddy, chunky, well padded, well covered, well upholstered
British informal podgy, fubsy
North American informal lard-assed
Scottish literary sonsy
rare pursy, abdominous
1.1(Of an animal bred for food) made plump for slaughter.While fat cow and bull prices are still weak, feeder cattle prices are strong....
- The market re-opened for the sale of fat cattle and sheep.
- The limit of his agrarian radicalism was a demand, conceded by the British, for the removal of differential between Irish fat cattle and animals fattened in Britain.
1.2Containing much fat: fat bacon...
- Use 3 rashers of smoked, fat, streaky bacon with the rind taken off.
- The stuffing was seasoned with salt and the bird coated with flour and strips of fat bacon and then roasted in the black oven pot with coals on the lid to maintain an even temperature.
- Use thin cut smoked streaky bacon as fat as you can get it.
Synonyms
fatty, greasy, oily, oleaginous, unctuous
formal pinguid, adipose, sebaceous
1.3(Of coal) containing a high proportion of volatile oils.
2Large in bulk or circumference: a fat cigarette...
- Eventually he would come up, sit down, then carefully roll himself a fat, untidy cigarette, spilling some tobacco in the process.
- Yet the questions remain: Are clean lungs and a fatter wallet worth my sanity?
- In order to attend you need not just a fat wallet but the right connections.
Synonyms
thick, big, chunky, substantial, extended, long
2.1 informal (Especially in the context of financial reward) substantial: a fat profit a fat cheque...
- He is not the first person to be sacked for missing targets and to walk out with a fat cheque, but what the bankers really disliked was the cut of his jib.
- For the rest, entering the entertainment world means having a colourful lifestyle, fat monetary rewards and an enviable social status.
- While they are buying well-known brand names and waiting for prestige and fat profits to result, they tend to forget the major difference between home and abroad.
Synonyms
large, substantial, considerable, sizeable;
generous, handsome, ample, excellent, good, competitive
2.2 informal Used ironically to express the belief that something is unlikely or does not exist: fat chance she had of influencing Guy’s decisions...
- There is a similarly fat chance of us accepting the other unquestioned assumptions underpinning misanthropic doom-mongering about health.
- I gave up - there wasn't a fat lot of difference anyway.
- Maybe the cause is so great or maybe the suffering is so intolerable that the ends justify any means - fat chance, but maybe.
Synonyms
very little, not much, minimal, hardly any
verb (fats, fatting, fatted) archaic
Make or become fat: (as adjective fatted) a fatted duck...
- So much like a 19th century professor he appeared, with his thick bristly sideburns covering either well fatted jowl.
- We were compelled to eat rotten biscuits and stinking decaying meat while our officers fatted themselves with the best food and drank the most expensive wines.
- We're like a prodigal son but we want to come back and get some fatted calf,’ she said.
Phrases
the fat is in the fire
kill the fatted calf
live off (or on) the fat of the land
Derivatives
fatless
/ adjective ...- There are stalls on cookware for waterless and fatless cooking, herbal medicine, and home-made health products.
- So in conclusion, Surin's ginger chicken did not pass muster - unless you're Lauren and you like your chicken fatless and flavorless.
- Baked once and stored in tins, fatless, sugarless squares of dough were cooked a second time before being distributed to men about to embark on a sea voyage or land battle.
fatly
/ adverb ...- For now, revel in being human and save extraordinary tasks for next week, when the full moon rolls fatly into your sign, and you'll be able to handle them with ease.
- They were like grapes glistening fatly in the sun.
- But even when the loaf is squatting fatly in the oven I can't quite believe I've actually created bread - a process both immensely satisfying and which stirs something pleasantly primal deep inside.
fattish
/ adjective ...- I am inside the pub at the appointed hour, standing at the bar next to a short, fattish man who also happens to be wearing a blue jacket.
- It was fattish (Mike insisted it was average) and overly cuddly.
- The eyes, mouth, and nose were worn away, with small, fattish yellow worms crawling around.
Origin
Old English fǣtt 'well fed, plump', also 'fatty, oily', of West Germanic origin; related to Dutch vet and German feist.
People have been described as fat since Anglo-Saxon times. The English writer George Orwell said in 1939, ‘I'm fat, but I'm thin inside. Has it ever struck you that there's a thin man inside every fat man, just as they say there's a statue inside every block of stone?’ Cyril Connolly echoed this in 1944 when he said that ‘Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.’ For some women fat is a feminist issue—the title of a 1978 book by Susie Orbach. The Bible gives us live on the fat of the land as a way of saying that we have the best of everything. It comes from the Book of Genesis, in Pharaoh's promise to Joseph and his family, ‘Ye shall eat the fat of the land’. Fat here represents an old sense of the noun meaning ‘the richest or choicest part of something’, which now survives only in this phrase. The fat is in the fire is recorded from the mid 16th century, when it referred to the complete failure of a plan. People spending time chatting in a leisurely way can be said to be chewing the fat. The origin of the expression is not entirely clear—it may have first been used in the Indian Army—but the most likely explanation is that it derives from the similarity between the movements of the jaw in chewing through fat or gristle and those involved in talking animatedly. See also opera, prodigal