Word.ws English Dictionary

barrel-bellied

barrel-bellied adjective: having a large prominent belly reminiscent of a barrel.

Adjective

barrel-bellied (comparative more barrel-bellied, superlative most barrel-bellied)

  1. Having a large prominent belly reminiscent of a barrel.
    • Two other hunters—next to him in presence of mind and energy—threw their arms round the great barrel-bellied infant, and hoisted him into the boat, which nearly capsized with the weight and struggle.1850 August 3, Charles Dickens, Household Words, volume 1, page 446
    • That showed what the Abbot was, besides being one of those bulging with importance barrel-bellied small men with an outsize in red doormat beards, which must have kept his face red-hot.1936, Norman Lindsay, The Flyaway Highway, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 40

Forms of barrel-bellied

comparativemore barrel-bellied
superlativemost barrel-bellied

Origin of barrel-bellied

From barrel + bellied.

Questions about barrel-bellied

What does barrel-bellied mean?
Barrel-bellied means having a large prominent belly reminiscent of a barrel.
What part of speech is barrel-bellied?
Barrel-bellied is an adjective.

Words near barrel-bellied in the dictionary

  1. barrel sling
  2. barrel sponge
  3. barrel sponges
  4. barrel vault
  5. barrel vaults
  6. barrel-bellied
  7. barrel-chested
  8. barrel-head
  9. barrel-heads
  10. barrel-house
  11. barrel-organ

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: barrel-bellied (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “barrel-bellied.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/barrel-bellied. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.