Word.ws English Dictionary

fattens up

fattens up is the third-person singular simple present indicative of fatten up.

Meaning of fatten up

Verb

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

  1. (transitive) To cause to gain weight by means of feeding.
    • My cat looks underweight, so I'll fatten him up with higher-calorie cat food.
  2. (intransitive) To become fat or fatter by gaining weight.
    • ‘And isn’t Declan looking very thin?’ Madge said. ‘He’ll never get a wife if he doesn’t fatten up a bit.’1999, Colm Tóibín, chapter 8, in The Blackwater Lightship, New York: Scribner, page 246
  3. (figuratively, transitive) To make bigger; to expand.
    • We must not fatten up our payroll with people performing nonessential activities.1954, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations, Department of the Army Appropriations for 1955: Hearings, page 161

Questions about fattens up

What is fattens up the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Fattens up is the third-person singular simple present indicative of fatten up.

Words near fattens up in the dictionary

  1. fatteningly
  2. fatteningness
  3. fattenings
  4. fattens
  5. fattens the curve
  6. fattens up
  7. fatter
  8. fattest
  9. fattie
  10. fattier
  11. fatties

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fattens up (page history and authors); fatten up (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.

Last updated:

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