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flabby

adj
/ˈflæb.i/

Etymology

From a variant of flappy, from flap (“to hang loose”). Compare English dialectal flapsy (“flabby”), Middle Dutch flabbe (“a slap in the face; a fan-blade; a hair ribbon; a wagging tongue”), Middle Low German flabbe (“a gaping mouth; a chatterbox”), Danish flab (“the jaw; cheeks; a malapert”), Swedish flabb, fläff (“the hanging underlip of an animal; guffaw; driveller”), German Flabbe (“a gob; muzzle”).

  1. derived from Flabbe — “a gob; muzzle”
  2. derived from flabb
  3. derived from flab — “the jaw; cheeks; a malapert”
  4. derived from flabbe — “a gaping mouth; a chatterbox”
  5. derived from flabbe — “a slap in the face; a fan-blade; a hair ribbon; a wagging tongue”
  6. derived from dialectal flapsy — “flabby”

Definitions

  1. Yielding to the touch, and easily moved or shaken

    Yielding to the touch, and easily moved or shaken; hanging loose by its own weight; lacking firmness; flaccid.

    • My attention was accidentally drawn to this aid, some five or six years ago, while attending a lady (multipara) in her confinement, who suffered from umbilical hernia, with large flabby abdomen.
    • A neglected gap was all the gate it had, and the first glance at the place was enough to let you see the flabby devil was running that show.
    • The strings of some violins when up to pitch are loose and flabby; some are very taut and hard.

  2. Having a slight lack of acidity

    Having a slight lack of acidity; having mild sweetness.

    • A flabby wine might be described as a wine in which nothing stands out.
    • An extremely hot region will give you flabby wine.

  3. overwrought.

    • As you revise, focus on eliminating flabby expressions. This takes conscious effort. As one expert copyeditor observed, “Trim sentences, like trim bodies, usually require far more effort than flabby ones.
  4. ›+ 1 more definition

    1. Which forms a surjection from the domain to every open subset of the codomain.

      • a flabby sheaf on a paracompact space

The neighborhood

  • antonymmuscledantonym(s) of “yielding to the touch”
  • antonymtautantonym(s) of “yielding to the touch”

Derived

flab, flabbily, flabbiness, unflabby

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at flabby. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01flabby02slight03smooth04bland05stimulating06serving07sitting08seated09baggy

A definitional loop anchored at flabby. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

9 hops · closes at flabby

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA