chubby

What it means

1. Of a person: slightly overweight, somewhat fat, and hence plump, rounded, and soft.

   Obviously the chubby child was eating too much.

   1 more example

   Slowly Skye wrapped her arms around the chubby woman's frame and rested her head on Rita's chest drenched with perspiration.

   2010, Marsha Hubler, The Long Ride Home, Zonderkidz, →ISBN, page 97

   Synonyms: chunky, plump, podgy, tubby, portly

2. Of a body part: containing a moderate amount of fat.

   It’s quite normal for babies to have chubby cheeks.

   1 more example

   The servant to whom he put this question was a young fellow with chubby cheeks, small, dull eyes, and a round chin, covered with a colorless down.

   1867, Ivan Sergheïevitch Turgenef [i.e., Ivan Turgenev], chapter I, in Eugene Schuyler, transl., Fathers and Sons […], New York, N.Y.: Leypoldt and Holt, →OCLC, page 1

   Synonyms: chunky, plump, podgy

In a sentence

Obviously the chubby child was eating too much.

Where it comes from

1. Old Norsekumben“stumpy”
2. Old Norsekubbr
3. Middle English*cubbe
4. Englishchubby

Recorded since 1611, from chub (“short, thick fish species used as bait"; used metaphorically since 1558 for "lazy person”), an assibilated form of cub (“a lump, heap, mass”) and cob, from Middle English *cubbe (found only in derivative cubbel (“a block to which an animal is tethered”)), from Old Norse kubbr, kumbr (“block, stump, log”) and/or Old Norse kumben (“stumpy”), equivalent to chub + -y. Cognate with dialectal Swedish kubbug (“fat, plump, chubby”). More at chub.