fleshy
Americanadjective
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fleshier,
comparative
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fleshiest
superlative
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having much flesh; plump; fat.
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consisting of or resembling flesh.
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Botany. consisting of fleshlike substance; pulpy, as a fruit; thick and tender, as a succulent leaf.
adjective
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fat; plump
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related to or resembling flesh
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botany (of some fruits, leaves, etc) thick and pulpy
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of fleshy
Middle English word dating back to 1325–75; see origin at flesh, -y 1
Explanation
Something that's fleshy is plump and thick, like the fleshy fruit of a ripe peach or the fleshy leaves of your giant rubber plant. When it's not describing the soft, almost meaty tissue of a plant, the adjective fleshy is most often used for people who are plump or well-padded. While today the word tends to be somewhat derogatory and judgmental, the original meaning of fleshy was simply "consisting of muscle and flesh."
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:
Dark pigment pushed into claw-like scratches feels like a peek into a figure’s spiritual void; fleshy hues bring out nicks and lines that enliven characters’ faces—some pained, others contemplative.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 19, 2026
At Santa Croce, the world's largest Franciscan church, Giotto's frescoes bear witness to his innovations, including modern spatial techniques such as foreshortening and human figures imparted with a fleshy weightiness.
From Barron's ● Jun. 12, 2026
More recent paleontology research has continued uncovering surprisingly detailed soft tissue preservation in Edmontosaurus specimens, including evidence of fleshy structures and preserved skin anatomy.
From Science Daily ● May 14, 2026
Then one day, as I sat down, the seat broke, and my fleshy cheek seemed to have plunged into the abyss.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 5, 2025
She looked at me sternly, her round, fleshy face grim.
From "The Chosen" by Chaim Potok
With 12 books of poetry and prose under his belt, he is finally out with a fleshier memoir.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 28, 2023
Juliènas will greet you with its fleshier expression, while Chénas will wrap your palate in silk.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 3, 2022
Over the course of their domestication, the modern bananas available in supermarkets lost their seeds and became fleshier and sweeter.
From Science Magazine ● Oct. 14, 2022
He said organic farming produced fleshier wines, while biodynamics gave “more pixels.”
From New York Times ● Jul. 19, 2018
I’m definitely fleshier than the average girl he dates and have stretch marks—my tiger stripes—where my thighs and butt expanded quicker than my skin was ready for, but it can’t be that bad, can it?
From "Odd One Out" by Nic Stone
One of Ingalls’s fleshiest evocations of such zero-sum power plays is captured in the title of her 1986 novella collection, “The Pearlkillers.”
From The New Yorker ● Feb. 25, 2019
Steel Hour's A Drum Is a Woman, was Jazzman Duke Ellington's most ambitious project in years, and also one of the fleshiest shows yet seen on the home screen.
From Time Magazine Archive
The doctors, when they came to look him over, found the print of a perfect circle on the fleshiest part of his anatomy.
From The U-boat hunters by James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
When the seedlings are three inches high, select those which have the thickest, fleshiest, and most numerous stems, and pot them.
From Asparagus, its culture for home use and for market: a practical treatise on the planting, cultivation, harvesting, marketing, and preserving of asparagus, with notes on its history by F. M. Hexamer
So she reached over and pinched him with all the power of strong young fingers on the very fleshiest part of his arm.
From The Heart of Arethusa by Frances Barton Fox
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.
