portly

comparative portlier · superlative portliest

1. Somewhat fat, pudgy, overweight.First known use 15th c.

   I've got a portly paunch I just can't shift I feel undesired, dismissed, adrift

   2026, “You You You”performed by Arab Strap

   4 more examples

   Indeed, the poor man has grown ten times as nervous as ever, since he has discovered, on such good authority, who the stout gentleman was. . . . He has anxiously endeavored to call up a recollection of what he saw of that portly personage; and has ever since kept a curious eye on all gentlemen of more than ordinary dimensions.

   1824, Geoffrey Crayon [pseudonym; Washington Irving], “Introduction”, in Tales of a Traveller, part 1 (Strange Stories. […]), Philadelphia, Pa.: H[enry] C[harles] Carey & I[saac] Lea, […], →OCLC

   In the length he attains, and in his baleen, the Fin-back resembles the right whale, but is of a less portly girth, and a lighter colour, approaching to olive.

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 32, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 151

   His portly middle section, rising beyond like a small hill, heaved rhythmically.

   1913, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 14, in The Little Nugget

   In Heavyweights, Tony Perkis (Ben Stiller) is a fitness guru who installs himself as the über-buff leader of Camp Hope, with the goal of helping portly youngsters shed their saggy stomachs and thunder thighs.

   2011 July 6, Nick Carbone, “Top 10 Worst Fictional Camp Counselors”, in Time, retrieved 08 May 2014

2. archaicHaving a dignified bearing; handsome, imposing.First known use 15th c.

   Be studious well to imitate My portly motion, mien, and gait

   1728, Jonathan Swift, A Dialogue between Mad Mullinix and Timothy

   2 more examples

   He ſends this Souldans daughter rich and braue, To be my Queene and portly Empereſſe, […]

   c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act I, scene ii

   Portly his person was, and much increast Through his Heroicke grace and honourable gest.

   1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC