fatten
Americanverb (used with object)
-
fattens,
present (3rd person singular)
-
fattened,
past participle, past
-
fattening
present participle
-
to make fat.
-
to feed (animals) abundantly before slaughter.
-
to enrich.
to fatten the soil; to fatten one's pocketbook.
-
Cards.
-
Poker. to increase the number of chips in (a pot).
-
Pinochle. to play a card that scores high on (a trick) expected to be taken by a partner.
-
verb (used without object)
-
fattens,
present (3rd person singular)
-
fattened,
past participle, past
-
fattening
present participle
verb
-
to grow or cause to grow fat or fatter
-
(tr) to cause (an animal or fowl) to become fat by feeding it
-
(tr) to make fuller or richer
-
(tr) to enrich (soil) by adding fertilizing agents
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
fattensimple
-
fattenssimple
-
have fattenedperfect
-
has fattenedperfect
-
am fatteningprogressive
-
are fatteningprogressive
-
is fatteningprogressive
-
have been fatteningperfect progressive
-
has been fatteningperfect progressive
Past
-
fattenedsimple
-
had fattenedperfect
-
was fatteningprogressive
-
were fatteningprogressive
-
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:
I, too, will fatten up this winter, whether I want to or not.
From Salon ● Sep. 26, 2026
Don’t stress about your pile of fall reading; fatten it up, baby, and pick up one of this month’s new releases.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 2, 2026
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.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 5, 2025
Hormones are usually used to fatten cattle in the later stages of production, a Defra spokesperson said, and therefore traces would be identifiable through checks.
From BBC ● May 9, 2025
Now he caught it and put it in a pen made of logs, to fatten.
From "Little House in the Big Woods" by Laura Ingalls Wilder
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
On Monday, the September contract for feeder cattle FCU26 — those that are fattened up for slaughter — fell 2.8% to end at $3.32 per pound in Chicago.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 28, 2026
Chey’s ex-wife now wants an appeals court to grant her a higher proportion of Chey’s fortune, fattened by the global AI frenzy, using an updated asset valuation.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
They arrived at the start of December at Smithfield Common in the City of London, where they were rested and fattened up for Christmas.
From BBC ● Dec. 24, 2025
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
Sometime in the eighties they invented pig balls, for pigs who were being fattened in pens.
From "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood
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
Monday’s game offered yet another example of how the team that supposedly is ruining baseball is fattening the wallets of the league’s other 29 teams.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 7, 2026
For example, it banned the export of live animals from Great Britain for slaughter and fattening and changed EU laws on gene editing crops.
From BBC ● Jan. 30, 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.
