fatten
Americanverb (used with object)
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fattens,
present (3rd person singular)
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fattened,
past participle, past
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fattening
present participle
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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)
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fattens,
present (3rd person singular)
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fattened,
past participle, past
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fattening
present participle
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:
It’s also possible that retailers, figuring that consumers would expect to pay more for tariffed washing machines and would assume the same effect held for dryers, charged more for the latter to fatten their profits.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 24, 2026
Feeders are ranchers who own feedlots where they fatten cattle and sell them to meatpackers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 24, 2025
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
The Seahawks need to fatten up before staring down this quartet of stiff challenges: 49ers, Cowboys, 49ers, Eagles.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 17, 2023
If you fatten up the subject by stuffing some words at the end, as in the diagram below, so that bridge no longer comes right before the verb, then agreement—defined over the tree—is unaffected.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
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
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 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
From the rear—particularly where his vertebrae were visible—he might almost have passed for one of those needy metropolitan children who are sent out every summer to endowed camps to be fattened and sunned.
From "Franny and Zooey" by J. D. Salinger
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
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
"The movement of sheep and goats for breeding, fattening and slaughter is banned throughout Greece," the agriculture ministry said.
From BBC ● Jul. 30, 2024
“Am I not?” cries Obsle, fattening out like a great hob-fish.
From "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin
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.
