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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

chubby.

Of a person: slightly overweight, somewhat fat, and hence plump, rounded, and soft.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈt͡ʃʌbi/[ˈt͡ʃʰʌ̈bi]/ˈt͡ʃɜbi/[ˈt͡ʃʰɜbi]
  1. Of a person: slightly overweight, somewhat fat, and hence plump, rounded, and soft.

    Obviously the chubby child was eating too much.
  2. Of a body part: containing a moderate amount of fat.

    It’s quite normal for babies to have chubby cheeks.
Where this word comes from

Recorded since 1611, from chub (“short, thick fish species used as bait"; used metaphorically since 1558 for "lazy person”), an assibilated form of cub (“a lump, heap, mass”) and cob, from Middle English *cubbe (found only in derivative cubbel (“a block to which an animal is tethered”)), from Old Norse kubbr, kumbr (“block, stump, log”) and/or Old Norse kumben (“stumpy”), equivalent to chub + -y. Cognate with dialectal Swedish kubbug (“fat, plump, chubby”). More at chub.

noun/ˈt͡ʃʌbi/[ˈt͡ʃʰʌ̈bi]/ˈt͡ʃɜbi/[ˈt͡ʃʰɜbi]
  1. A chubby, plump person.

  2. A chubby, plump person. An overweight or obese gay man.

    slang
  3. A penile erection, especially when short and with a large circumference; a boner.

    slang
  4. A type of thickly-padded fur jacket.

Where this word comes from

Recorded since 1611, from chub (“short, thick fish species used as bait"; used metaphorically since 1558 for "lazy person”), an assibilated form of cub (“a lump, heap, mass”) and cob, from Middle English *cubbe (found only in derivative cubbel (“a block to which an animal is tethered”)), from Old Norse kubbr, kumbr (“block, stump, log”) and/or Old Norse kumben (“stumpy”), equivalent to chub + -y. Cognate with dialectal Swedish kubbug (“fat, plump, chubby”). More at chub.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.