fatness

From Middle English fatnesse, fattenesse, from Old English fǣtnes (“fatness, the richest part of anything”), equivalent to fat +‎ -ness.

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈfætnəs/

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• Rhymes: -ætnəs

fatness (countable and uncountable, plural fatnesses)

1. The state, quality, or condition of being fat.
   • 1597, John Gerarde [i.e., John Gerard], “Of Panick”, in The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes. […], London: […] Edm[und] Bollifant, for Bonham and Iohn Norton, →OCLC, book I, page 79:

     Bread made of Pannick nouriſheth little, and is cold and dry, verie brittle, hauing in it neither clammineſſe, nor fatneſſe; and therefore it drieth a moiſt belly.

   • 1624, John Donne, “19. Prayer”, in Deuotions upon Emergent Occasions, and Seuerall Steps in My Sicknes: […], London: […] A[ugustine] M[atthews] for Thomas Iones, →OCLC, page 508:

     As therefore the morning devv, is a pavvne of the evenings fatneſſe, ſo, O Lord, let this daies comfort be the earneſt of to morrowes, […]

   • 1958, Anthony Burgess, The Enemy in the Blanket (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 284:

     This fatness was Kartar Singh: it was the flesh singing, in bulging cantilenas and plump pedal-notes, a congenital and contented stupidity, a stupidity itself as positive as the sun.

• thinness

• obesity

• fastens