obeseadj.n.

1651 N. Biggs Matæotechnia Medicinæ Praxeωs ⁋251 More obese and plethorick bodies.

1654 E. Gayton Pleasant Notes Don Quixot i. iii. 8 One said of an Over-Obese Priest that he was a great Arminian; grant, quoth a second, that he be an Arminian, I'll swear he is the greatest that ever I saw.

1799 C. Crowther in T. Beddoes Contrib. Physical & Med. Knowl. 350 From a state of extreme macilency [she] became obese.

1822 T. Taylor tr. Apuleius Metamorphosis 316 A back obese, and animated breast.

1847 C. Brontë Jane Eyre I. iv. 57 A woman of robust frame, square shouldered..and though stout not obese.

1864 F. Oakeley Hist. Notes 85 An obese octavo, extending to six hundred closely printed pages.

1883 W. Bromley Davenport in 19th Cent. Sept. 402 A few obese fat-headed carp.

1915 W. S. Maugham Of Human Bondage xxxii. 138 The Vicar gave his slow, obese smile.

1962 H. Hood Flying Red Kite 176 An obese brown bus waddled up like an indecent old cow and stopped with an expiring moo at the head of the line.

1984 S. Abraham & D. Llewellyn-Jones Eating Disorders ii. 20 Obese people choose to eat more food and eat it more quickly than non-obese people.

2001 E. Schlosser Fast Food Nation x. 240 The medical literature classifies a person as obese if he or she has a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or higher.

1826 W. Kirby & W. Spence Introd. Entomol. IV. 260 Obese ([Latin] obesa). Unnaturally enlarged and distended, as if from disease or too much food.

1901 Amer. Naturalist 35 720 A normal colony of Anergates comprising an obese queen, some slender young queens, some males and some Tetramorium workers.

1906 J. B. Smith Explan. Terms Entomol. 89 Obese, unnaturally distended: usually applied to the abdomen.

1922 Sci. Monthly Oct. 321 The body of the old queen is so obese and heavy with eggs and her wings are so weak that she can not leave the nest after it is once established.

1942 Sci. Monthly July 33/1 Only the obese, blind worker with its dentated mandibles, crossing scissor fashion, is able to carve wood and pass it through its intestines.

1915 W. S. Maugham Of Human Bondage xvii. 67 He had the choler of the obese, easily roused and as easily calmed.

1990 W. Sheed Ess. in Disguise iii. xv. 183 If the misers are the anorexics of money, spendthrifts must be the obese. At least they both take money much too seriously.

2000 Observer 18 June 27/3 The underclass of the obese are..that way..maybe because their (justified) feelings of being disenfranchised and marginalised are unbearable unless narcoticised with food.

1950 A. M. Ingalls et al. in Jrnl. Heredity 41 317 (title) Obese, a new mutation in the house mouse.

1975 Metabolism 24 573 By mating mice heterozygous for the recessive gene, obese (ob/+) (+/+), with mice homozygous for the recessive gene, dwarf (+/+)(dw/dw), and subsequent mating of the offspring, mice homozygous for both the obese and dwarf gene were obtained.

1987 Genomics 1 167/1 This places met near the obese locus in a region of mouse chromosome 6 that appears to be homologous with the long arm of human chromosome 7.

1998 Jrnl. Endocrinol. 159 79 Leptin, the recently identified product of the obese gene, may very well be an integral signal which regulates neuroendocrine responses in times of food deprivation.