flabby
Americanadjective
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hanging loosely or limply, as flesh or muscles; flaccid.
-
having such flesh.
-
lacking strength or determination.
adjective
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lacking firmness; loose or yielding
flabby muscles
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having flabby flesh, esp through being overweight
-
lacking vitality; weak; ineffectual
Other Word Forms
- flabbily adverb
- flabbiness noun
Etymology
Origin of flabby
1690–1700; apparently expressive alteration of earlier flappy, with same sense; flap, -y 1; compare late Middle English flabband (attested once), evidently with sense “flapping”
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Meanwhile the narrator’s financially devious husband appears as a vulture with “the brooding eye, the blood-tipped beak, the flabby folds of flesh” of a bird of prey.
From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 24, 2025
Instead of a skeleton and scales, the blobfish has a soft body and flabby skin.
From BBC • Mar. 19, 2025
There’s no method here that will render it crispy and browned, and no one wants to cut through flabby chicken skin.
From Salon • Feb. 24, 2025
They are short, tall, flabby, lean, clean-shaven, bearded, bald and pony-tailed.
From New York Times • Nov. 27, 2024
"Oh somebody," I said, with a flabby gesture of dismissal.
From "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
