tubby

American  

[tuhb-ee] / ˈtʌb i /

adjective

tubbier, tubbiest

1. short and fat.

   a tubby child.

2. having a dull, thumping sound; lacking resonance.

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tubby British  

/ ˈtʌbɪ /

adjective

1. plump

2. shaped like a tub

3. rare having little resonance

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Other Word Forms

• tubbiness
  noun

Etymology

Origin of tubby

First recorded in 1800–10; tub + -y ¹

Explanation

To be tubby is to be round and plump, and maybe a bit on the short side. Many cartoon characters, including Porky Pig, Garfield, and Homer Simpson, are a little tubby. The informal noun tubby is usually used to describe a person, and as a result it's almost always offensive — it's just generally bad form to comment on the shape of someone's body! You might, however, describe your plump little kitten as tubby or mold a tubby figure out of clay. Tubby, thought to come from "shaped like a tub," has been in use since the 1890s.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

tubby tubbier tubbiest

Diving in a kelp forest in Monterey Bay recently, I watched a tubby 200-pound harbor seal follow a fellow diver, nibbling on his flippers.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 16, 2025

Of all the things to say about Gaetz … tubby?

From Slate ● Apr. 18, 2024

In 2019, the state Department of Environmental Conservation evicted a tubby cat named Stormy from the general store in Fritz Creek where it had been living, as the feline’s presence violated food sanitation rules.

From Seattle Times ● Apr. 17, 2023

“A little big boy dance. A little tubby tummy thing.”

From Washington Post ● Aug. 20, 2017

“Very pleasant, thank you,” said Mum, as a tubby man with joke-shop sideburns trundled a large, white, lidded wheely bucket round from the front of the house.

From "Black Swan Green" by David Mitchell

The singers Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson and Jennifer Hudson are showing off newly slender bodies to entice tubbier folks to follow their example.

From New York Times ● Dec. 15, 2011

Though the Chairman was tubbier and more paternal, he was just as embalmed by celebrity as Jackie Kennedy or Elvis Presley, Warhol's earlier subjects.

From Time Magazine Archive

The other was a smaller and tubbier man, pleasant to look upon, a man evidently who lived for and by good eating and drinking.

From Patsy by Crockett, S. R. (Samuel Rutherford)

Slick and smear it over and leave it sounding sicklier and tubbier and more generally disgusting than ever.

From Mary Wollaston by Webster, Henry Kitchell

Broad of beam, heavily sparred, with high freeboard and bluff, Dutchy bow, the Uncle Toby was the slowest, tubbiest, safest, and most fool-proof schooner David Grief possessed.

From A Son Of The Sun by London, Jack