Word.ws English Dictionary

portliest

portliest is the superlative form of portly.

Meaning of portly

Adjective

portly (comparative portlier, superlative portliest)

  1. Somewhat fat, pudgy, overweight.
    • Indeed, the poor man has grown ten times as nervous as ever, since he has discovered, on such good authority, who the stout gentleman was. . . . He has anxiously endeavored to call up a recollection of what he saw of that portly personage; and has ever since kept a curious eye on all gentlemen of...1824, Geoffrey Crayon [pseudonym; Washington Irving], “Introduction”, in Tales of a Traveller, part 1 (Strange Stories. […]), Philadelphia, Pa.: H[enry] C[harles] Carey & I[saac] Lea, […], →OCLC
  2. (archaic) Having a dignified bearing; handsome, imposing.
    • He ſends this Souldans daughter rich and braue,
      To be my Queene and portly Empereſſe, […]c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC...

Questions about portliest

What is portliest the superlative form of?
Portliest is the superlative form of portly.

Words near portliest in the dictionary

  1. portless
  2. portlet
  3. Portlethen
  4. portlets
  5. portlier
  6. portliest
  7. portlight
  8. portlights
  9. portlike
  10. portlily
  11. portliness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: portliest (page history and authors); portly (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: “portliest.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/portliest. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.