flabby

[ flab-ee ]

adjective

, flab·bi·er, flab·bi·est.

1. hanging loosely or limply, as flesh or muscles; flaccid.
2. having such flesh.
3. lacking strength or determination.

flabby

/ ˈflæbɪ /

adjective

1. lacking firmness; loose or yielding

   flabby muscles

2. having flabby flesh, esp through being overweight
3. lacking vitality; weak; ineffectual

Derived Forms

• ˈflabbily, adverb
• ˈflabbiness, noun

Other Words From

• flabbi·ly adverb
• flabbi·ness noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of flabby¹

1690–1700; apparently expressive alteration of earlier flappy, with same sense; flap, -y ¹; compare late Middle English flabband (attested once), evidently with sense “flapping”

Word History and Origins

Origin of flabby¹

C17: alteration of flappy , from flap + -y ¹; compare Dutch flabbe drooping lip

Example Sentences

With warming temperatures, the heat-sensitive, thin-skinned grape overripens and the acidity drops, resulting in a wine that tastes flabby and lacks depth and complexity.

From Outside Online

Most of the others had crusts that were too flabby, too tough or too overcooked to be worth eating.

From Washington Post

Winemaker Xavier Arnaudin harvests early to avoid the flabby, high-alcohol-style wine the grape can yield when too ripe, then he adds a little texture by fermenting the grapes on their skins.

From Washington Post

Music generally sounds flabbier through the Echo compared to the Nest Audio.

From Fortune

After a night with football legend Joe Namath, she told her driver that Namath was “flabby.”

From The Daily Beast

He was twenty-five and in peak physical condition when he went in, but a flabby thirty when he came out.

From The Daily Beast

Not every kid who returns home suffers from bombastic dreams matched only by their lack of direction and flabby self-discipline.

From The Daily Beast

You see for yourself that that paragraph just consists of flabby and general rhetoric that kinda sorta sounds believable.

From The Daily Beast

In a Rolling Stone article about Secretary of State Clinton, he referred to her “flabby arms.”

From The Daily Beast

It is as much as I can do to prevent myself flinging my arms round the old shop-woman's neck and kissing her flabby cheeks.

From Project Gutenberg

When I hear (as I often do) some flabby boozer whining and ascribing his trouble to the drinkshop, I despise him.

From Project Gutenberg

His eyes had retreated deeper into the sockets, and his thick lips, once so firm and domineering, were loose and flabby.

From Project Gutenberg

The flabby hand laid the weapon in Crozier's lean and strenuous fingers.

From Project Gutenberg

The object had something of the form of a jester's bauble with points, which hung flabby and undulating.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• lax
• sloppy