Etymology

flabby

F4L1A1B3B3Y4

Today it means: Yielding to the touch, and easily moved or shaken; hanging loose by its own weight; lacking firmness; flaccid. Full definition →

Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

From a variant of flappy, from flap (“to hang loose”). Compare English dialectal flapsy (“flabby”), Middle Dutch flabbe (“a slap in the face; a fan-blade; a hair ribbon; a wagging tongue”), Middle Low German flabbe (“a gaping mouth; a chatterbox”), Danish flab (“the jaw; cheeks; a malapert”), Swedish flabb, fläff (“the hanging underlip of an animal; guffaw; driveller”), German Flabbe (“a gob; muzzle”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.