plumpitude

Noun

plumpitude (countable and uncountable, plural plumpitudes)

1. (uncountable) The quality or state of being plump.
   • And yet glorious, and beautiful as is the present season, we have a greater fondness for “Appled autumn, golden cheeked and tan;” when the grape is purpling on the trellis and the pippin hangs goldenly from the richly laden boughs; when the ripe yellow corn is bursting its husks, and the big...1853 August 20, The New York Journal; an Illustrated Literary Periodical, volume I, New York, N.Y.: P. D. Orvis, […], published 1854, page 118, column 1
   • An ingenious English inventor proposes to remedy the want of bust in ladies of “a given thinness” by a jacket, to be inflated by the wearer to the proper shape, and, as Willis would say, “plumpitude.”1861 March 30, Evening Star, volume XVII, number 2.531, Washington, D.C., page [4], column 1
2. (countable) Something that is plump.
   • At the close of the second act, the Viennese Dancers tripped upon the stage—These, as you know, are twenty or thirty children, apparently from five years old to ten, who dress and dance like full-grown dancing girls and produce astonishing effects by their well drilled combinations—They are...1845 July 3, N[athaniel] P[arker] Willis, “From the New York Mirror. Willis’s Letters from London. […]”, in Rutland Herald, volume 51, number 33, Rutland, Vt., published 14 August 1845, front page...
   • Excuse, therefore, the shortcomings of genius under the sudorific influence of the summer solstice; for be assured that the vertical sun, however it may dulcify and mature cherries, plums, and other fruitful ‘plumpitudes,’ is by no means favorable to the development of intellectual products.1853, Whirligig, quotee, edited by William Kidd, Kidd’s Own Journal; for Inter-Communications on Natural History, Popular Science, and Things in General, volume IV, number 8, London: William Spooner...