fatten

present singular third person fattens · participle present fattening · participle past fattened · past fattened

1. transitiveTo cause (a person or animal) to be fat or fatter.

   We must fatten the turkey in time for Thanksgiving.

   2 more examples

   And if the mat[t]er be too little, the vertue of digestion fayleth, and the bodye is dryed, and if the matter and meate be moderate, the meats is well digested, and the bodye fattened, the heart comforted, kinde heate made more, the humors made temperate, & wit made cleere:

   1582, Stephen Batman, transl., Batman vppon Bartholome his Booke De Proprietatibus Rerum, London: Thomas East, Book 6, Chapter 25, p. 82

   In that classroom full of oily potato-chip-fattened adolescents, she was everyone’s ideal of translucent perfume-advertisement femininity.

   1969, Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, published 2010, Part 1, Chapter 4

2. intransitiveTo become fat or fatter.

   He gradually fattened in the five years after getting married.

   3 more examples

   The Laplanders, possessing a country where corn will not grow, make bread of the inner bark of trees; and Linneus reports, that swine there fatten on that food […]

   1774, Henry Home, Lord Kames, “Sketches of the History of Man”, in Sketch, volume 1, Dublin: James Williams, 2, pp. 49-50

   His soul was fattening and congealing into a gross grease, plunging ever deeper in its dull fear into a sombre threatening dusk […]

   1916, James Joyce, chapter III, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC, page 127

   Mushrooms fatten in the warm September rain.

   1955, J. P. Donleavy, chapter 6, in The Ginger Man, New York: Dell, published 1965, page 43

   Synonyms: gain weight, put on weight

3. transitiveTo make thick or thicker (often something containing paper, especially money).

   “You horrible old man, you’ve always tried to turn Erik into a slave, to fatten your pocketbook! […]”

   1920, Sinclair Lewis, chapter XXXIII, in Main Street: The Story of Carol Kennicott, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, →OCLC, page 401

   3 more examples

   […] stirred by the air / That freshened from the window, these ascended ⁠/ In fattening the prolonged candle-flames, / Flung their smoke into the laquearia, / Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.

   1922 October, T[homas] S[tearns] Eliot, “Part II. A Game of Chess.”, in The Waste Land, 1st book edition, New York, N.Y.: Boni and Liveright, published December 1922, →OCLC, page 18

   The news spread, about the bastard caterer who was toying with their religious sentiments, trampling on their beliefs, polluting their beings, all for the sake of fattening his miserable wallet.

   1995, Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance, London: Faber & Faber, published 1997, Part 5, p. 241

   It was the impotence of the money, and of all the pent-up warlike fancies that had earned it, to do anything but elaborate the wardrobe and fatten the financial portfolios of the owners of Empire Comics that so frustrated and enraged him.

   2000, Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, New York: Random House, Part 3, Chapter 2, p. 177

4. intransitiveTo become thick or thicker.

   The pencil-line of light by his feet fattened to a bar. Alan looked around and saw Norris Ridgewick.

   1991, Stephen King, Needful Things

   1 more example

   A broad river of white paper rushed constantly up from the cylinder and leaped into a mangling chaos of machinery whence it emerged a second later, cut, printed, folded and stacked, sliding along a board with a hundred others in a fattening sheaf.

   1929, Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel, London: Heinemann, published 1930, Part 2, Chapter 22

5. transitiveTo make (soil) fertile and fruitful.

   to fatten land

   2 more examples

   1612, Joseph Hall, Contemplations vpon the Principall Passages of the Holie Storie, London: Sa. Macham, Volume 1, Book 4, p. 333, As the riuer of Nilus was to Egypt in steed of heauen to moisten and fatten the earth; so their confidence was more in it then in heauen;

   The earth is fattened with our dead; She swallows more and doth not cease: Therefore her wine and oil increase And her sheaves are not numberèd;

   1850, Christina Rossetti, “A Testimony”, in Goblin Market and Other Poems, London: Macmillan, published 1862, page 163

   Synonyms: enrich

6. intransitiveTo become fertile and fruitful.

   These hostile Fields shall fatten with thy Blood.

   1700, “The First Book of Homer’s Ilias”, in John Dryden, transl., Fables Ancient and Modern, London: Jacob Tonson, page 205