rotund
/rə(ʊ)ˈtʌnd
/adjective
1(Of a person) large and plump: her brother was slim where she was rotund...
- Two beady eyes set too far apart regarded them lifelessly, head cocked to the side to expose what little neck the rotund man had.
- The rotund woman compressed her lips, ‘Secrets must not be shared.’
- A short and rotund figure waddled onto the stage.
Synonyms
plump, chubby, fat, stout, roly-poly, fattish, portly, dumpy, chunky, broad in the beam, overweight, heavy, pot-bellied, beer-bellied, paunchy, Falstaffian;
buxom, well upholstered, well covered, well padded, of ample proportions, ample, round, rounded, well rounded, full;
flabby, fleshy, bulky, corpulent, obese
informal tubby, pudgy, beefy, porky, blubbery, poddy
British informal podgy, fubsy
North American informal zaftig, corn-fed, lard-assed
archaic pursy
rare abdominous
1.1Round or spherical: huge stoves held great rotund cauldrons...
- The nascent temperance movement, too, is suggested by the rotund whiskey jug placed prominently in the foreground.
- Serving pots for coffee retained the tall tapered look of their Arab counterparts, while tea pots retained the squat, rotund shape initially seen in China.
- The approached a strange formation in the side of the cliff: a large, rotund tunnel dug deep into the side of the mountain.
Synonyms
round, bulbous, spherical
rare rotundate, spheral, spheric, spherular, orbicular
2(Of speech or literary style) sonorous; grandiloquent.This phraseology is grandiose, rotund and sonorous, but signifies a fatal weakness in Walcott's approach to both Brand and Philip....
- So the style becomes more rotund, more rococo, more elaborate.
- From sharp treble frenzy arpeggios, to screeching lead runs and rotund chords his playing produces more notes and resonance than three regular players could do on a particularly productive day.
Synonyms
sonorous, full-toned, full-bodied, round, rich, deep, mellow, resonant, reverberant;
magniloquent, grandiloquent, orotund
rare pear-shaped, canorous
Derivatives
rotundity
/ noun ...- I wear a size eighteen which, I hasten to add because I want to be clear about the extent of my rotundity, is a US size fourteen.
- ‘Thank you,’ he said and nearly skipped away, surprisingly sprightly for all his rotundity.
- As evidenced by an early case of tuberculosis and a later rotundity, Ben also adopted a somewhat cavalier attitude to his body and its needs.
rotundly
- Alfie cuts a fine figure in a rotundly roundabout sort of way, as he sachets and saunters down the high street.
- His cats are either rotundly ruminative, as in the picture of the wash-day, or predatory.
- The Colombian artist Fernando Botero, famous for his rotundly oversized figures, has donated a collection of works of art worth an estimated $250 million to two museums in his native country.
Origin
Late 15th century: from Latin rotundus, from rotare 'rotate'.