fatten
Americanverb (used with object)
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to make fat.
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to feed (animals) abundantly before slaughter.
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to enrich.
to fatten the soil; to fatten one's pocketbook.
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Cards.
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Poker. to increase the number of chips in (a pot).
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Pinochle. to play a card that scores high on (a trick) expected to be taken by a partner.
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verb (used without object)
verb
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to grow or cause to grow fat or fatter
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(tr) to cause (an animal or fowl) to become fat by feeding it
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(tr) to make fuller or richer
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(tr) to enrich (soil) by adding fertilizing agents
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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fattensimple
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fattenssimple
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have fattenedperfect
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has fattenedperfect
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am fatteningprogressive
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are fatteningprogressive
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is fatteningprogressive
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have been fatteningperfect progressive
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has been fatteningperfect progressive
Past
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fattenedsimple
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had fattenedperfect
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was fatteningprogressive
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were fatteningprogressive
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had been fatteningperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of fatten
Explanation
To fatten someone is to feed them until they become bigger and fatter. Your grandmother might see a tiny baby and say, "His mother needs to fatten him up!" A farmer might spend weeks trying to fatten his prize pigs before he sells them for meat, and you may visit relatives who keep cooking you delicious food in an attempt to fatten you up. Figuratively, you can also fatten things like your bank account, by making it larger. Before the 1550s, the verb form of this word was fat — and both fat and fatten come from the Old English word fætt, "fat or plump."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
They are sold to feedlots that fatten them up before being shipped to slaughterhouses.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 20, 2026
Mountain goats deal with heavy snow, and have a short window of time to fatten up before the thick of winter.
From Seattle Times ● May 22, 2024
They lauded her history, beliefs and wit, such as when she was asked about student testing during a gubernatorial debate and replied, “You don’t fatten a hog by weighing it more often.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 30, 2024
Liz Truss told the Institute for Government she tried to rear, fatten and slaughter a pig on market day in her rush to meet voters' need for change saying she had "limited time".
From BBC ● Sep. 18, 2023
The corporation’s directors were empowered to fatten its portfolio with other promising inventions and use them the same way.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
It also fattens the wallet for those who help it happen.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 3, 2026
The weaker yen helps make Japanese exports more competitive overseas and fattens profits when they are converted from dollars to yen, but it also raises costs both for consumers and businesses.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 19, 2022
Corn is a part of modern life in all sorts of ways: It fattens up livestock and gets turned into biofuels.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 12, 2021
Wansink’s fall is both singular and parabolic: It can be taken as a moral teaching on what happens when an expert gorges on his good intentions and fattens off his expertise.
From Slate ● Feb. 28, 2018
Everywhere there are limits, but the thin fattens, the cloudy clears.
From "Typical American" by Gish Jen
The company is shifting cattle deliveries from feedlots where livestock are fattened to its other large processing facilities across the U.S., such as Grand Island, Neb., and Cactus, Texas.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 16, 2026
They are used to supply farms where they are fattened up for sale in Asia where eels are a highly sought delicacy.
From Barron's ● Nov. 18, 2025
Put it all together, and the Dodgers have taken one of the best rosters in baseball and fattened it.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 24, 2025
Overall, the banking system remains flush with cash, reflecting the unprecedented surge in deposits during the pandemic, as savings rates increased and government assistance programmes fattened people's accounts.
From BBC ● Apr. 15, 2023
Hoovers fattened dossier on Oppenheimer eventually landed on Eisenhower’s desk, with Strauss near at hand to interpret.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
He would hold them for around three months, for the intermediate stage in their lives called backgrounding, because the animals build up health and immunity before being sold again to feedlots for final fattening.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 7, 2026
He likens the effect of these chemicals on water-born bacteria to offering hungry humans a roomful of fattening fast food.
From BBC ● May 10, 2025
All of my friends are, like, anorexic basically, or have some form of eating disorder, so it’s hard to get people to eat fattening food with me.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 18, 2025
Typically, once calves reach six or eight months, they are weaned and sent to larger, industrial pastures to roam in vast herds, fattening on grass, though this pastoral interlude is a short one.
From Salon ● Oct. 17, 2024
Alternatively, hunters may have caught and ‘adopted’ a lamb, fattening it during the months of plenty and slaughtering it in the leaner season.
From "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
