flabby
Americanadjective
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hanging loosely or limply, as flesh or muscles; flaccid.
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having such flesh.
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lacking strength or determination.
adjective
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lacking firmness; loose or yielding
flabby muscles
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having flabby flesh, esp through being overweight
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lacking vitality; weak; ineffectual
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of flabby
1690–1700; apparently expressive alteration of earlier flappy, with same sense; see flap, -y 1; compare late Middle English flabband (attested once), evidently with sense “flapping”
Explanation
If you're flabby, you're out of shape, with a soft, slack body. Some people join a gym when they're feeling a little flabby. People who are flabby aren't star athletes — you may be flabby after a long, cold winter spent mostly indoors, or feel flabby as you struggle to hike up a mountain. You can describe other things as figuratively flabby too, if they're a little sloppy or weak. Flabby writing is messy and disorganized, and a flabby politician is ineffective. Flabby started as flappy, "softly fleshy," in the 16th century.
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.
Meanwhile the narrator’s financially devious husband appears as a vulture with “the brooding eye, the blood-tipped beak, the flabby folds of flesh” of a bird of prey.
From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 24, 2025
Instead of a skeleton and scales, the blobfish has a soft body and flabby skin.
From BBC • Mar. 19, 2025
They are short, tall, flabby, lean, clean-shaven, bearded, bald and pony-tailed.
From New York Times • Nov. 27, 2024
When we need the churning dread of an intimate tale of generational trauma, “The Marsh King’s Daughter” goes formulaic, and when we’re primed for exploitation sweats, it gets flabby.
From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 3, 2023
His plump flabby face had turned grey with fearful apprehension.
From "Matilda" by Roald Dahl
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.
