fatten

Verb

fatten (third-person singular simple present fattens, present participle fattening, simple past and past participle fattened)

1. (transitive) To cause (a person or animal) to be fat or fatter.
   • We must fatten the turkey in time for Thanksgiving.
   • 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
2. (intransitive) To become fat or fatter.
   • He gradually fattened in the five years after getting married.
   • 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

   Synonyms:

   gain weight, put on weight

3. (transitive) To 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
   • […] 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
4. (intransitive) To become thick or thicker.
   • 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
   • The pencil-line of light by his feet fattened to a bar. Alan looked around and saw Norris Ridgewick.1991, Stephen King, Needful Things
5. (transitive) To make (soil) fertile and fruitful.
   • to fatten land
   • 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;1612, Joseph Hall, Contemplations vpon the Principall Passages of the Holie Storie, London: Sa. Macham, Volume 1, Book 4, p. 333

   Synonyms:

   enrich

6. (intransitive) To 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