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:
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
We see the folds best in raking light—directed at the painting from an acute angle—and the fleshy effect was created by the painter zigzagging the wax pigment across her neck in layers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 20, 2026
The Oscar they won for the fleshy organic work they did with Brendan Fraser on “The Whale” is nowhere to be seen.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 14, 2025
My mother would have stiffened and politely allowed her small body to be enfolded in those fleshy arms.
From "Native Speaker" by Chang-rae Lee
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
So the labeling here puts the word Muscadet in small print on the back label, and the burgundy-style broad shouldered bottle suggests a fleshier wine.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 6, 2021
He said organic farming produced fleshier wines, while biodynamics gave “more pixels.”
From New York Times ● Jul. 19, 2018
At age 78, he is fleshier and far more affable, with rimless glasses sliding down his nose and receding white hair combed straight back.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 1, 2017
He had filled out, from the slight boy of their university days to a fleshier, more muscled man, and perhaps because he had filled out, he seemed shorter than she remembered.
From "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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
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 Hexamer, F. M.
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 Fox, Frances Barton
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 Connolly, James B. (James Brendan)
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.
