fatten

[fat-n]

verb (used with object)

1. to make fat.

2. to feed (animals) abundantly before slaughter.

3. to enrich.

   to fatten the soil; to fatten one's pocketbook.

4. Cards.

   1. Poker.,  to increase the number of chips in (a pot).

   2. Pinochle.,  to play a card that scores high on (a trick) expected to be taken by a partner.

verb (used without object)

1. to grow fat.

fatten

/ ˈfætən /

verb

1. to grow or cause to grow fat or fatter

2. (tr) to cause (an animal or fowl) to become fat by feeding it

3. (tr) to make fuller or richer

4. (tr) to enrich (soil) by adding fertilizing agents

Other Word Forms

• fattenable adjective
• fattener noun
• fattening adjective
• overfatten verb (used with object)

Word History and Origins

Origin of fatten¹

First recorded in 1545–55; fat + -en ¹

Example Sentences

One term for the scams is pig butchering, because the scammers “fatten up” their targets by entangling them in romantic relationships online and dangling bogus financial schemes, then “butcher” them by disappearing with their money.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Neither did the temporary suspension of export taxes for grain dealers, which generated dollar inflows but didn’t fatten the bank’s war chest because there was also lots of peso selling.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Wilson’s phalaropes feed and fatten up at Mono Lake before their migration to South America.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

James Canton spent two years sitting beneath an 800-year-old oak tree near his home in Essex, watching acorns fatten and butterflies land on the massive knurled grey trunk.

Read more on BBC

That isn’t enough to sway the gladiatorial majority, which is mostly made up of men grinning at the fattening piggy bank suspended above them.

Read more on Salon

Related Words

• augment 
• broaden 
• build up 
• swell