fatten

English edit

Etymology edit

From fat +‎ -en.

Pronunciation edit

IPA^(key): /ˈfætən/, [ˈfæʔn̩]
Audio (Southern England) (file)
Rhymes: -ætən

Verb edit

fatten (third-person singular simple present fattens, present participle fattening, simple past and past participle fattened)

(transitive) To cause (a person or animal) to be fat or fatter.
We must fatten the turkey in time for Thanksgiving.
- 1582, Stephen Batman, transl., Batman vppon Bartholome his Booke De Proprietatibus Rerum‎^[1], London: Thomas East, Book 6, Chapter 25, p. 82:
  And if the mat[t]er be too little, the vertue of digestion fayleth, and the bodye is dryed, and if the matter and meate be moderate, the meats is well digested, and the bodye fattened, the heart comforted, kinde heate made more, the humors made temperate, & wit made cleere:
- 1969, Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman‎^[2], Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, published 2010, Part 1, Chapter 4:
  In that classroom full of oily potato-chip-fattened adolescents, she was everyone’s ideal of translucent perfume-advertisement femininity.
(intransitive, of a person or animal) To become fat or fatter.
Synonyms: gain weight, put on weight

He gradually fattened in the five years after getting married.
- 1774, Henry Home, Lord Kames, “Sketches of the History of Man”, in Sketch‎^[3], volume 1, Dublin: James Williams, 2, pp. 49-50:
  The Laplanders, possessing a country where corn will not grow, make bread of the inner bark of trees; and Linneus reports, that swine there fatten on that food […]
- 1916 December 29, James Joyce, chapter III, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC, page 127:
  His soul was fattening and congealing into a gross grease, plunging ever deeper in its dull fear into a sombre threatening dusk […]
- 1955, J. P. Donleavy, chapter 6, in The Ginger Man‎^[4], New York: Dell, published 1965, page 43:
  Mushrooms fatten in the warm September rain.
(transitive) To make thick or thicker (often something containing paper, especially money).
- 1920, Sinclair Lewis, chapter 33, in Main Street: The Story of Carol Kennicott, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, →OCLC, page 401:
  “You horrible old man, you’ve always tried to turn Erik into a slave, to fatten your pocketbook! […] ”
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- 1922 October, T[homas] S[tearns] Eliot, “Part II. A Game of Chess.”, in The Waste Land, 1st book edition, New York, N.Y.: Boni and Liveright, published December 1922, →OCLC, page 18:
  […] stirred by the air / That freshened from the window, these ascended ⁠/ In fattening the prolonged candle-flames, / Flung their smoke into the laquearia, / Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
- 1995, Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance‎^[5], London: Faber & Faber, published 1997, Part 5, p. 241:
  The news spread, about the bastard caterer who was toying with their religious sentiments, trampling on their beliefs, polluting their beings, all for the sake of fattening his miserable wallet.
- 2000, Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay‎^[6], New York: Random House, Part 3, Chapter 2, p. 177:
  It was the impotence of the money, and of all the pent-up warlike fancies that had earned it, to do anything but elaborate the wardrobe and fatten the financial portfolios of the owners of Empire Comics that so frustrated and enraged him.
(intransitive) To become thick or thicker.
- 1929, Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel‎^[7], London: Heinemann, published 1930, Part 2, Chapter 22:
  A broad river of white paper rushed constantly up from the cylinder and leaped into a mangling chaos of machinery whence it emerged a second later, cut, printed, folded and stacked, sliding along a board with a hundred others in a fattening sheaf.
- 1991, Stephen King, Needful Things:
  The pencil-line of light by his feet fattened to a bar. Alan looked around and saw Norris Ridgewick.
(transitive) To make (soil) fertile and fruitful.
Synonym: enrich

to fatten land
- 1612, Joseph Hall, Contemplations vpon the Principall Passages of the Holie Storie, London: Sa. Macham, Volume 1, Book 4, p. 333,^[8]
  As the riuer of Nilus was to Egypt in steed of heauen to moisten and fatten the earth; so their confidence was more in it then in heauen;
- 1850, Christina Rossetti, “A Testimony”, in Goblin Market and Other Poems‎^[9], London: Macmillan, published 1862, page 163:
  The earth is fattened with our dead;
  She swallows more and doth not cease:
  Therefore her wine and oil increase
  And her sheaves are not numberèd;
(intransitive) To become fertile and fruitful.
- 1700, “The First Book of Homer’s Ilias”, in John Dryden, transl., Fables Ancient and Modern‎^[10], London: Jacob Tonson, page 205:
  These hostile Fields shall fatten with thy Blood.