chubby

Syllables: chubb·y/ˈt͡ʃʌbi/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/ˈt͡ʃɐ̞bi/

chubby adjective: of a person: slightly overweight, somewhat fat, and hence plump, rounded, and soft.

Adjective

chubby (comparative chubbier, superlative chubbiest)

Of a person: slightly overweight, somewhat fat, and hence plump, rounded, and soft.
- Obviously the chubby child was eating too much.
- 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
Of a body part: containing a moderate amount of fat.
- It’s quite normal for babies to have chubby cheeks.
- 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

Noun

chubby (plural chubbies)

A chubby, plump person.
- Today there is no color or fabric that is out for girl or teen chubbies. Plaids, big, bold block designs, dark or light grounds, heavy textured wools, fleeces and brilliant colors of red, kelly or green, odd or off shades of rust, lavender, and other colors in the fashion cycle are now adapted in...1947, Girls' and Teens' Merchandiser: The National Trade Magazine for the Girls' and Teens' Industrypage=31
- The chubby is the girl who cannot be fitted in the regular 7 to 14 size range because she is too stout. Sizes for these girls are 7*4 to 141/^, and are specially styled and designed to give them better proportions.1949, R. Duffy Lewis, Dorothy Stote, How to build an infant's, girls' and teens' wear business: a manual for retailers and prospective shop owners
1. (slang) An overweight or obese gay man.
(slang) A penile erection, especially when short and with a large circumference; a boner.
- Hey, Lucius, I just wanted to share a piece of personal information with you. I've got a... a chubby right now because [starts screaming] This is one of the most awesome experiences of my life!2006, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
A type of thickly-padded fur jacket.

chubby meaning in Marathi, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada

chubby in Malayalam

plump, tubby, fat: കൊഴുത്ത, കൊഴുത്തുരുണ്ട, പുഷ്ടിയുള്ള, മാംസളമായ, തികഞ്ഞ ആരോഗ്യത്തിലുള്ള, മാംസപുഷ്ടിയുള്ള

chubby in Kannada

ಕಿರುಂಡೆಗ

More languagesFewer languages

chubby in Nepali: चब्बी
chubby in Persian: تپل topol, کپل kopol, لنبه lonbe
chubby in Thai: เจ้าเนื้อ

Examples of chubby in a sentence

Designers themselves have learned that the chubby is more truly eager for a fashionable dress[…]1947, Girls' and Teens' Merchandiser: The National Trade Magazine for the Girls' and Teens' Industrypage=31:
The chubby is especially taken for granted: "Hey, can you watch my purse while I dance?"2007, Jackie Guerra, Under Construction: How I've Gained and Lost Millions of Dollars and Hundreds of Pounds, New American Library, →ISBN:

All 25 example sentences with chubby

Synonyms of chubby

All synonyms of chubby

Forms of chubby

Adjective
comparative	chubbier
superlative	chubbiest
Noun
plural	chubbies

Origin of chubby

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.

Words formed from chubby

Phrases with chubby

Words that rhyme with chubby

4 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about chubby

What does chubby mean?: Chubby means of a person: slightly overweight, somewhat fat, and hence plump, rounded, and soft.
What is chubby in Marathi?: Chubby in Marathi is गुबगुबीत (gubgubīt). See Chubby meaning in Marathi.
How do you use chubby in a sentence?: Designers themselves have learned that the chubby is more truly eager for a fashionable dress[…]
What part of speech is chubby?: Chubby can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce chubby?: Chubby is pronounced /ˈt͡ʃʌbi/.

Words near chubby in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: chubby (page history and authors); गुबगुबीत (Marathi) (page history and authors); chubby (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); chubby (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); chubby (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); chubby (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-chubby.oga, En-au-chubby.ogg.

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