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Obese   Listen
adjective
Obese  adj.  Excessively corpulent; fat; fleshy.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Obese" Quotes from Famous Books



... considerable portion of the London basin. It is characterised by its coarseness of texture, and a conglomeration of the parts of speech. Its animal remains usually consist of retired licensed victuallers and obese tallow-chandlers, who are generally found in beds of soft formation, separated from superincumbent layers of Marseilles quilts, by interposing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various

... reconstructs them, and they torture me with their veiled horrors! I need to have my doubts resolved. At last, this morning, I took my courage in both hands. Again I see the hospital, again I see the red-faced, obese concierge, reeking with life as one reeks with wine, and the corridors where the morning light falls upon the pale ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... the Arch-Tempter into immediate flight, and keeping himself free from all possible incitement to be anything but good, were a face, head and neck shaped not unlike an old-fashioned water-pitcher, and a form suggestive of an obese lobster balancing on an upright horse-shoe. His nose was too high up; his mouth and chin bulged too tremendously; his neck inside a whole mainsail of shirt-collar was too much fluted, and his eyes were as much too small and oyster-like as his ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various

... more or less noteworthy—unpleasantly so, I am obliged to add. One was red-faced and obese, the other was tall, thin and wiry and showed as many seams in his face as a blighted apple. Neither of the two had anything to recommend him either in appearance or address, save a certain veneer of polite assumption as transparent ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green

... search for beauty," drawled Simonoff. "This is the dance of Greek maidens at the sacrificial rites to Demeter. The Grand street thing is a contortion before the obese complacency of the great god Jazz. And ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... with thee!" Thus did she sing sadly within her own bosom,—sadly, but with true poetic cadence; while Sophia and Lucius Mason, sitting by, when for a moment they turned their eyes upon her, gave her credit only for the cross solemnity supposed to be incidental to obese and ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... arrival of so many new scholars put the main idea in her mind aside. This troubling thought was of Miss Picolet and the sound of the harp on the campus at midnight. The absence of the French teacher from the dormitory, the connection of the little lady with the obese foreigner who played the harp on the Lanawaxa, and the sounding of harp-strings on the campus in the middle of the night, were all dovetailed together in Ruth Fielding's mind. She wondered what ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson

... people in a body To the Town Hall came flocking: "Tis clear," cried they, "our Mayor's a noddy; And as for our Corporation—shocking To think we buy gowns lined with ermine For dolts that can't or won't determine What's best to rid us of our vermin! You hope, because you're old and obese, To find in the furry civic robe ease? Rouse up, sirs! Give your brains a racking To find the remedy we're lacking, Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing!" At this the Mayor and Corporation ...
— The Pied Piper of Hamelin • Robert Browning

... men in the world," Wingrave continued, "called philanthropists, amiable, obese creatures as a rule, whose professed aim in life it is to do as much good as possible. I take my stand upon the other pole. It is my desire to encourage and to work as much evil as possible. I wish to ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... world but life in the heart of a whirling avalanche. How youth can live it! And all the time, all the time while poor, dear youth is hurtling through it, there's age, instead of streaming sympathy like oil upon those boiling waters, standing in slippered safety, in buttoned dignity, in obese repose, bawling at tumbling youth, "Why can't you settle down! Why can't you settle down! Why do you behave like that? Why can't you do as I do? Why can't you be like your wise and sober Uncle Forty? Or like your good and earnest Auntie Fifty? Why can't you behave like your pious grandmother? ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... obese man, that so many fresh tourists find so charming, is a Turkish official. He and his ancestors have ruled the land since 1517. A Wilberforce in sentiment, he is the representation of "that shadow of shadows for good—Ottoman rule." The Turks, whether ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... room for some one. It was He! A port-wine flavored He, a He who traded, Rich, rosy, round, obese to a degree! A sense of injury overmastered me. Quite bulbously his ample boots upbraided ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... all this, but lay as one dead. He was conscious but paralysed by the potion, and could only watch the girl in the grip of the obese monster and feel his heart going ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace

... marble from the mountains and haul it, and who to dig the foundations and blast the steel and fasten the girders together? It was easy for the dreamers and the literary loafers and the irresponsible cartoonists to denounce the capitalists and draw pictures of them as obese swine wallowing in bags of gold while emaciated children put out their lean hands in vain. But cartoons were not construction, and the men who would revolutionize the world could not, as a rule, keep ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... at a brisk pace he collided with a man coming from the opposite direction. Jon had stopped on the instant, but there wasn't time to jump aside. The obese individual jarred against him and fell to the ground. From the height of elation to the depths of despair in an instant—he had injured ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison

... obese and sleepy-eyed, slowly turned and regarded John, and having done so, nodded his head, and ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine

... The obese Spider is gravely devouring something in the midst of a circle of onlookers. And what? The remains of a Lycosa a little smaller than herself, the remains of her male. It is the end of the tragedy that concludes the nuptials. The sweetheart ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... are accustomed to think of the Germans as an obese race, swinging big paunches in front of them; but in that army the only fat men we saw were officers, and not so many of them. On occasion, some colonel, beefy as a brisket and with rolls of fat on the back of his close-shaved ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... a Utopian population is vigour. Everyone one meets seems to be not only in good health but in training; one rarely meets fat people, bald people, or bent or grey. People who would be obese or bent and obviously aged on earth are here in good repair, and as a consequence the whole effect of a crowd is livelier and more invigorating than on earth. The dress is varied and graceful; that of the women reminds one most of the Italian ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... not gain very much, however, by my inspection. Our visitor bore every mark of being an average commonplace British tradesman, obese, pompous, and slow. He wore rather baggy grey shepherd's check trousers, a not over-clean black frock-coat, unbuttoned in the front, and a drab waistcoat with a heavy brassy Albert chain, and a square pierced bit of metal dangling down as an ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... who had lately refused his deposition, turned upon him with the bitterest insults and contumely. With his hands bound behind him and his garment torn, the obese old glutton was dragged through crowds who treated him with scoffs and words of contempt, not a voice of pity or sympathy being heard. A German soldier struck at him with his sword, and, missing his aim, ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... very spirited pictures of Campagna life and incidents, a very striking portrait of Beefsteak. He was sitting in a straw-bottomed chair, as we have so often seen him in the Lepre, calm, dignified in his deportment, and somewhat obese. The full brain, the narrow, fastidious nose, the sagacious eye, were so perfectly given, that I seemed to feel the actual presence of my old friend. So admirable a portrait of so distinguished a person should not be lost to the world. It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... to be a World Power, must either uphold everywhere the principles by which it had been begotten and made great or sink into the state of an obese, helpless parasite. Its sister republics would ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke

... were ushered into the outer circle, where, in a hut considerably larger than those inhabited by the common people, they found the king seated on a pile of mats, he being utterly unable to squat down in the fashion of his less obese subjects. Hendricks saluted him in due form, and Crawford and Percy imitated their leader as well as they could. They then arranged themselves so as to form part of a circle on one ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston

... the West India Islands. Late that afternoon Paul rowed out to the schooner, and received an enthusiastic welcome from the captain, who had evidently been enjoying himself "without restraint or embarrassment." He took Paul into a roomy cabin, and introduced him to his wife, a Very obese yellow woman, who was reclining on a sofa. The woman was undoubtedly of negro blood; but to Paul's profound astonishment, she had as fine a brogue as her husband. After some conversation Paul ventured to ask the captain how this happened. The latter ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... marry again. That would be the most satisfactory settlement of her difficulties. She is, I quite agree with you, a very attractive person. Now, there is the Duke of Panama already, Lady Adeline says—but she seems to have an objection to princes, especially if they are at all obese. I do not like obese people myself. Now, do you ever feel nervous ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... weeds, she flung herself again—old, obese, and faded as she was—into a round of dissipation which shocked and disgusted even London, accustomed as it was to the vagaries of the "quality," until she was glad to escape from the storm of censure she ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... kverko. Oakum stupo. Oar remilo. Oasis oazo. Oath (legal) jxuro. Oath (curse) blasfemo. Oatmeal grio. Obduracy obstineco. Obdurate obstina. Obedience obeo. Obedient obea. Obeisance riverenco. Obelisk obelisko. Obese grasega. Obesity vastkorpeco. Obey obei. Obituary nekrologio. Object (end, aim) celo. Object kontrauxparoli. Object objekto. Objection kontrauxparolo. Objectionable riprocxeblinda. Objective (purpose) celo. Oblation ofero. Obligation ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... 40 years; a licensed broker; nativity, American; temperament, sanguine; habit, slightly obese; constitution, robust. History of the ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... brother," said Father Johannes, "that in my profane and worldly days I tried that experiment on a dog, and the poor brute died in five minutes. Ah, brother," he added, observing that his obese companion was now thoroughly roused, "you see before you the chief of sinners! Judas was nothing to me; and yet, such are the triumphs of grace, I am an unworthy member of this most blessed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... dating from the first visit to Augsburg, is the half-length of the Elector John Frederick of Saxony, now in the Imperial Gallery at Vienna. He sits obese and stolid, yet not without the dignity that belongs to absolute simplicity, showing on his left cheek the wound received at the battle of Muehlberg. The picture has, as a portrait by Titian, no very commanding merit, no seduction of technique, and it is easy to imagine that Cesare Vecellio ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips

... was as crowded as a bee-hive. Happy, dirty, big-eyed children played in the gutters while their obese mothers squatted untidily on the stoops. No lack of the zest of life here. It shamed ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... tender green of the young oaks, clothed in a brown coat, a black cravat, and a very high hat, which the justice, who loved correctness in details, thought it his duty to don whenever called upon to perform his judicial functions. The clerk, Seurrot, more obese, and of maturer age, protuberant in front, and somewhat curved in the back, dragged heavily behind, perspiring and out of breath, trying to keep up with his patron, who, now and then seized with compassion, would come to a halt and wait for ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet

... lids grooved like shells, trussed up in exported gowns, loaded with diamonds and jewels like a Hindoo idol, she was a most perfect specimen of the transplanted Europeans who are called Levantines. A strange race of obese Creoles, connected with our society by naught save language and dress, but enveloped by the Orient in its stupefying atmosphere, the subtle poisons of its opium-laden air, in which everything becomes limp and nerveless, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... the contents of his large snuff-mull forced into his eyes, ere twenty strokes were struck. He ran roaring and prophecying, like blind Tiresias, among both parties, and, as a prophet, we respected him. The French master being very obese, was soon borne down, and there he lay sprawling and calling upon glory and la belle France, whilst both sides passed over him by turns, giving him only an occasional kick when they found him in their way. It is said of Mr Simpson, the mathematical master,—but ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... of Jumbo, obese negro, waiter at the Tally-ho Club for many years, appeared rashly ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... man, too obese to descend from his high wagon, bought an immense dinner bell and he was hit unmercifully. A rusty old fly-catcher elicited many remarks—as "no flies on that." I bought several chests, half full of rubbish, but found, ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn

... up in the dim space the punkahs were swaying short to and fro, to and fro. Here and there a draped figure, dwarfed by the bare walls, remained without stirring amongst the rows of empty benches, as if absorbed in pious meditation. The plaintiff, who had been beaten,—an obese chocolate-coloured man with shaved head, one fat breast bare and a bright yellow caste-mark above the bridge of his nose,—sat in pompous immobility: only his eyes glittered, rolling in the gloom, and the nostrils dilated and collapsed violently as he breathed. Brierly dropped into his seat ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... instinct than the dumb beasts, and with more brutality. There are others who,—adding the low cunning of the monkey to the vanity of the peacock,—seek no other object but the furtherance of their own designs, which are always petty even when not absolutely mean. There are obese women whose existence is a doze between dinner and tea. There are women with thin lips and pointed noses, who only live to squabble over domestic grievances and interfere in their neighbours' business. There are your murderous women with large almond eyes, ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... pompous Spaniard, obese, with bristling brows and moustaches, who wrinkled his forehead and winked ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... he interviewed a certain bishop, who waived the matter thus: "Surely what difference does it make, since he had no business to be born at all?"—a very Milesian-like reply. Houssaye is too sensible a man to waste words with the spiritually obese, and so merely answered in the language of Terence, "I am a man and nothing that is human is alien ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... "Therefore, we of Puffyloaf are taking today what may be the ultimate step toward purity: we are aerating our loaves with the noble gas helium, an element which remains virginal in the face of all chemical temptations and whose slim molecules are eleven times lighter than obese carbon dioxide—yes, noble uncontaminable helium, which, if it be a kind of ash, is yet the ash only of radioactive burning, accomplished or initiated entirely on the Sun, a safe 93 million miles from this planet. Let's have a cheer for ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... the advice of the numerous laymen who write eat-and-grow-thin menus is that they advise the elimination of all fats, sugars and starches. They lose sight of the fact, or they do not know, that the obese individual—I dislike that term—will have to have a balanced diet even while reducing if he is to maintain his health. One will lose weight on these menus, but as very many can testify they lose their health also. One cannot live on an unbalanced diet for any length of time ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters

... "Andromaque," nor "Athalie"—Corneille and Racine's masterpieces—ever produced such rapturous enthusiasm. Monsieur Mery dashed off extemporaneously, in Marseillais accent, admiring paradoxes which lacked nothing but splendid rhyme. Monsieur Theophile Gautier, who looked like an obese Turk habited in European clothes, laid aside his Moslem placidity to cry that the tragedy was marvellous. Monsieur Alfred de Musset, lolling in his arm-chair in an attitude which seemed a compromise between sleep and Kief, smiled beatifically. ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... figure resolved itself into that of a middle-aged man of the laboring class, slow, heavy, and obese. In his rather bovine countenance hardly any spark of intelligence shone. He did not appear to have seen the others as he approached, but evinced neither surprise nor interest when Hilliard ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts

... can get but a meagre view of the latter. The room is altogether rather dark, it being one of our manners and customs not to throw much light on prayers, and he has chosen the darkest corner of it. I only vaguely see the outline of a kneeling figure, evidently neither bulky nor obese, of a flat back and vigorous shoulders. His face is generally hidden in his hands, but once or twice he lifts it to scan the proportions of my late grandfather's preposterously fat cob, whose portrait hangs on the wall ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... reading-desk, of him looking down, of her looking up, exchanging tender discourse. Immediately both dived, and became as it were non-existent on this sphere. With an assumption of innocence I turned to leave the sacred edifice, when an obese form stood in the portal, puffily demanding Joseph, or in default of Joseph, Celia. Taking this monster by the sleeve, and luring him forth on pretence of showing him whom he sought, I gave time for the emergence of Joseph and Celia, who presently came towards ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... and shivering with cold under their wraps. They could see one another but indistinctly in the darkness, and the mountain of heavy winter wraps in which each was swathed made them look like a gathering of obese priests in their long cassocks. But two men recognized each other, a third accosted them, and the three began to talk. "I am bringing my wife," said one. "So am I." "And I, too." The first speaker added: "We shall not return to Rouen, and if the Prussians approach Havre we will cross to ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... emigrant on the road. He was a German; and his name, he told me, was Karl Klitz. The shortest of the party, Barnaby Gillooly, was also by far the fattest; indeed, it seemed surprising that, with his obese figure, he could undergo the fatigue he must constantly have been called upon to endure. He seemed to be a jolly, merry fellow notwithstanding, as he showed by breaking into a hearty laugh as Klitz, stumbling ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston

... At every gaming-table sit on one side Ecstasy, Enthusiasm, Romance—the frenzy of joy; on the other side, Fierceness, Rage, and Tumult. The professional gamester schools himself into apparent quietness. The keepers of gambling rooms are generally fat, rollicking, and obese; but thorough and professional gamblers, in nine cases out of ten, are pale, thin, wheezing, ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... born the 13th May, 1792, and elected Pope the 16th June, 1846, under the name of Pius IX., is a man who looks more than his actual age; he is short, obese, somewhat pallid, and in precarious health. His benevolent and sleepy countenance breathes good-nature and lassitude, but has nothing of an imposing character. Gregory XVI., though ugly and pimply, is said to ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... stout, muscular man, with a ruddy countenance; he never wore gloves, and you saw at once he was not a gentleman by birth. He had a fine voice: it was deep, mellow, and, when he chose, sonorous. This, and his person, ample, but not obese, gave him great weight, especially with his female pupils. If he was not quite so much reverenced by the men, yet he was both respected and liked; in fact, he had qualities that make men welcome in every situation,—good humor, good sense, and tact. A good son of his Church, and early ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... obese and his face lean. A fat bust and a bony countenance. His nails were channelled and short, his fingers knotted, his thumbs flat, his hair coarse, his temples wide apart, and his forehead a murderer's, broad and low. The littleness of his eye was hidden under his bushy eyebrows. His nose, long, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... had in inveigling both himself and "Poker" John into their present difficulties. Now he understood, and a burning desire swept over him to shoot the man down where he sat. Then a revulsion of feeling came to him and he saw the ludicrous side of the situation. He gazed at Lablache, that obese mountain of blubber, and tried to think of the beautiful, wild Jacky as the money-lender's wife. The thing seemed so preposterous that he burst ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... us on what they thought to be one of those domestic differences common to the most affectionate couples. "A tiff, a tiff!" said they, nudging each other. "Virginia has caught him with the gardener's wife. We shall get no sleep to-night." This gardener's wife was an obese and asthmatic matron of some two-score years; who occupied a room in our little house, and was kinder to me than I cared for. It was not until Gioiachino and his Teresa were asleep that I could hope to discover ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... intensified many times, burdened with the affliction of the spirit, raised to a pitch abnormal, the unhappy man of genius is stoned because he staggers beneath the load of his sensitive temperament or wavers from the straight and narrow path usually blocked by bores too thick-headed and too obese to realise the flower-fringed abysses on either side of the road. And having sent genius in general among the goats, let us turn ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... "haunts" and "spooks," just as do some countries that do not believe in such things. One of the spectres troubles a steep slope near Lihue, Kauai. An obese and lazy chief ordered one of his retainers to carry him to the top of the slope on his shoulders. It was a toilsome climb, the day was hot, hence it is no wonder that just before he gained the summit ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... drive me crazy, you obese, misshapen wine skin! you bloated, blue-faced sot!" said the woman. "I deserted young Hilsenhoff for you, Hilsenhoff with his delicate cheeks and his soft yellow hair, and he is mine and I am his and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... that sweetness from the lips of an obese lady, after one has assured her of the arrival of a double chin, always ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... man of five feet four, short and fat, disposed to become obese as he advanced in age; and with one of those placid faces where all—hair, eyebrows, eyes, and skin—seem of the same color; in fact, one of those faces of which, at ten paces, one does not distinguish a feature. The most enthusiastic physiognomist, ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... been reinforced by an elderly woman, whom she introduced as "mi madre," and two or three Indian muchachas, or girls, clad in a costume not differing much from that of our mother Eve. The latter were obese in their figures, and the mingled perspiration and filth standing upon their skins were any thing but agreeable to the eye. The two senoras, with these handmaids near them, were sitting in front of the house, busily engaged in ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant

... it is," she exclaimed triumphantly, producing an obese Morocco purse. "I put it in here for safety, knowing how liable one is to get one's pocket picked in these crowded London streets." She opened the bulky receptacle and drew it out after the manner of a concertina, exhibiting multitudinous partitions, all ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... few acquaintances passed them hurriedly. Ancient pot-wallopers, and thriving shopkeepers, in their intervals of leisure, stood at their shop-doors—their toes hanging over the edge of the step, and their obese waists hanging over their toes—and in discourses with friends on the pavement, formulated the course of the improvident, and reduced the children's prospects to a shadow-like attenuation. The sons of these men (who wore breastpins of a sarcastic kind, and smoked humorous pipes) stared at ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... or obese, and the gross or high livers. To treat, raise the head to a nearly upright position; unloose all tight clothes, strings, etc., and apply cold water to the head and warm water and warm cloths to the feet. Have the apartment ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... among the rocks, and leaping out at the home-made wharf. Here they held the boat steady in a regular naval style, while their chief and his companions stepped out, the former using the black backs for support, for big and strong as he was his obese state ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn

... milk-cart, told me curious story. Homburg resorted to by invalids of both sexes and all conditions; take the waters inside and out; but my friend told me of another cure not less remarkable. Soil of Homburg composed of Fuller's-earth, warranted to absorb superfluous grease from cloth substances. Obese Englishman hearing this on arrival, asked why this quality should be confined to application to cloth? if Fuller's-earth took superfluous fat from piece of cloth, why not from body of stout Englishman? Decided ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various

... diving down into the dark mines of the Oural; I have seen an English gentleman perched like a chamois on the top of St. Bernard, hat in hand, roaring "God save the Queen." I have seen some sipping Syracusan wine, puffing a comfortable cloud from obese cigars, most irreverently seated in the big nose of St. Carlo Borromeo. One-half of England is gone to China, the other half to Africa; these will speak to you of Kamschatka, those of the mountains of the Moon, just as a London cockney or a Parisian badaud would speak to you ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... as warm rooms and soft beds—is so deeply imbedded in the fiber of this type that he has ever to face a fight with himself which the rest of us do not encounter. This sometimes leads the excessively corpulent person to relax into laziness and slovenliness. An obese individual sometimes surprises us, however, by ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

... looked stolidly at the mildewed clothes and tried to remember, but he failed to be explicit, and the greasy, obese creature, still chewing, was recalled to assist his master's memory. He spoke in a high chirping voice, and looked at Hartley with angry eyes as he asserted that his master had been ill upon the evening mentioned and that he had closed the shop early, and that he ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie

... this enbonpoint, as an essential feature of female or other beauty in the most early times, say as far back as the Carthaginian and other ancient settlers in Malta. The rude statues lately dug up in that island are all remarkable for obese processes from the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... from the girl, in the act of addressing her, stood a man, obese, gross, abnormally distended with luxurious and sluggish living, as little common to the scene as a statue of Phoebus Apollo had been: a babu of Bengal, every inch of him, from his dirty red-and-white turban to his well-worn and cracked patent-leather shoes. His body was ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... the check, Claire tried to think of some protest which would have any effect on the obese wits of the restaurant man. In face of his pink puffiness she gave it up. Her failure as a Citizeness Fixit sent her out of the place in a fury, carried her on in a dusty whirl till the engine spat, sounded ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... windows opened upon a sandy street, beyond which was a tangled garden of cacti and hollyhock and sunflowers, with a great wall about it; but I could look over the wall and enjoy the privacy of that sweet haunt. In that cloistered garden grew the obese roses of the far West, that fairly burst upon their stem. Often did I exclaim: "O, for a delicate blossom, whose exquisite breath savors not of the mold, and whose sensitive petals are wafted down the invisible ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... woman of middle age, wrapped at all times in dirty rags (not to be called clothing), obese, grimy, with dishevelled black hair, and hands so scarred, so deformed by labour and neglect, as to be scarcely human. She had the darkest and fiercest eyes I ever saw. Between her and her mistress went ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... with its stays. From one aspect its rotund body invites a good-humoured smile, for the marking exactly simulates the features of a tabby cat, well fed, sleepy, and in placid mood. Venom of virulence to kill a bat almost instantly would be severe enough to a human being. This dirty, obese spider deserves little consideration ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... tobacco, like excess in any other material good meant for moderate use, is followed by evil effects, more or less quickly, according to the constitution and temperament of the abuser. The lymphatic and obese can smoke more than the sanguine and nervous, with impunity. How much constitutes excess varies with each individual. Manufacturers of tobacco do not appear to suffer. Christison states, as the result of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... teeth, each having a dish-cover braced around him in lieu of a breastplate, a newly-scoured brass porringer on his head, a large pewter platter instead of a buckler, and a spit with a bung at the point, to prevent mischief, in place of a lance. The Duke's jester was an obese little fellow, and his appearance in this warlike gear was so eminently ridiculous, that it provoked roars of laughter, while Archie was scarcely less ridiculous. After curveting round the arena in imitation of knights of chivalry, and performing "their careers, their prankers, their ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... idea then—nor had Celia—how much inconvenience and embarrassment can be produced by a warm-hearted parlour-maid. Jillings' devotion did not express itself in a concrete form until Celia's birthday, and the form it took was that of an obese and unimaginably hideous pincushion which mysteriously appeared on her dressing-table. Old and attached servants are in the habit of presenting their employers on certain occasions with some appropriate gift, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various

... to her generation if she did not resent the trespasses which the world regularly commits upon pioneers and artists. For all the superb vitality of her frontier, it faces—and she knows it faces—the degradation of its wild freedom and beauty by clumsy towns, obese vulgarity, the uniform of a monotonous standardization. Her heroic days endure but a brief period before extinction comes. Then her high-hearted pioneers survive half as curiosities in a new order; and their spirits, transmitted to the artists who are their legitimate successors, take ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... "O—h," Jacob protested, as the darkness began breaking in front of him and the light showed through, but the man was reaching across him to get something—the fat Italian man in his dicky, unshaven, crumpled, obese, was opening the door and going ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... in a state of subpituitarism. They are people who may have something wrong or inferior with their pituitary, but not to the extent of interference with their daily life. They go about with their type stamped upon them for the seeing eye. The classical type is obese, with fat distributed everywhere, but more so in the lower abdomen and the lower extremities. They are slow and dull, and sexually inactive, often impotent. They are sometimes tall, but most often dwarfish, and may be subject to epileptic seizures. ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... of her golden lily; Chi-nong, the god who taught men how to cook; Fo, with long eyes closed in meditation, and lips smiling the mysterious smile of Supreme Beatitude; Cheou-lao, god of Longevity, bestriding his aerial steed, the white-winged stork; Pou-t'ai, Lord of Contentment and of Wealth, obese and dreamy; and that fairest Goddess of Talent, from whose beneficent hands eternally streams the iridescent ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn

... shot him a look of hatred. He did not know why that gross, obese man excited in him so violent a repulsion. But his thoughts wandered and he found his mind filled with memories of the past. He went back five and twenty years. It was when he first came to the island, weary of Apia, with its heavy ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... the obese and drunken chief surrounded by fawning harpies was a shameful and disgusting one. One example is sufficient to show how the thing was done. A concession for gambling was applied for. The man who interpreted knew a smattering of 'kitchen' Kaffir, and his rendering ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... is that of the laggard Dutch; a People apt to be heavy in the stern-works. They are quite languid about Pragmatic Sanction, these Dutch; they answer his Britannic Majesty's enthusiasm with an obese torpidity; and hope always they will drift through, in some way; buoyant in their own fat, well ballasted astern; and not need such swimming for life. "What a laggard notion," thinks his Majesty; "notion in ten pair of breeches, so to speak!" This stirring up of the Dutch, which lasts ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... Museum, as she assured me, alone to the gate, self-introduced as an American lady, the gate flew open, as it were magically. I am unwillingly bound to add that she certainly was young and exceedingly pretty. Still, the porter of that institution is of an obese habit, and, according to the best of my observation of him, ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... crowd. The room is full to overflowing. Babies are deposited on the benches along the wall, dogs look in at the window. The air is heavy with mosquitoes and tobacco-smoke. But joy reigns. Nobody is too old or too obese to dance. Old Mr. Loutit and lame Jimmy Flett each secures a sonsy partner. There are three fiddlers, and these relieve each other in turn, for fiddling, beating time with your moccasin on the earthen floor, and "calling out" is hard work ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... reigned supreme in the servants' hall, the other occupants taking their cue from her, and regulating their tastes and occupations in accordance with hers. Now this woman—an obese, red- armed, and red-visaged person of about forty years of age—was possessed by a morbid and consuming curiosity concerning all those horrors and criminal mysteries which appear from time to time in the public prints; and the more horrible they were, the greater was her interest ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... over and I have alternated a contemplation of the loves and fears, the tremors and triumphs of some obese stage princess with a lusty entr'-acte excursion into Culmbacher and the cheese sandwich, served, as is the appealing custom, in the theatre promenade. And thus fortified against the night, I pass again into the thoroughfares ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... had begun to make a suitable reply, when she was interrupted by the appearance of one of Mr Mould's assistants—his chief mourner in fact—an obese person, with his waistcoat in closer connection with his legs than is quite reconcilable with the established ideas of grace; with that cast of feature which is figuratively called a bottle nose; and with a face covered all over with pimples. He had been a tender ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... An obese nymph pictured in the foam of a beer sign, apparently elaborated with a whitewash brush and finished in the throes of an epileptic fit, solicited a share of ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... Peter left his obese mother and hurried to the corner, Dawson Bobbs, the constable, had handcuffs on Tump's wrists, and stood with his prisoner amid a crowd of ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... The only question is, whether you can and will deviate from the practice of the world into an obese lunatic's ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... little eyes as he looked at the splendid young fellow who had seemed, physically anyway, so fit a match for Leonie as they tramped down the hill together; and though there was no sign of his inward perplexity and repulsion in Jan Cuxson's face as his eyes swept the obese figure of the notorious old knight, his jaw took a sudden, almost ugly, outward thrust with the birth of a ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... matter?" the latter asked. "Really, the air seems full of mystery. Do you know that for the last two minutes you have been regarding that obese capitalist with a look that was absolutely murderous? Do you mean to tell me that you have ever seen ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White

... mind's eye the wee animal coming out of the egg, endowed with sufficient power of motion not to dread a walk and with sufficient slenderness to glide into the smallest crevices. Once in the presence of the larva on which it is to feed, it doffs its travelling dress and becomes the obese animal whose one duty it is to grow big and fat in immobility. This is all very coherent; it is all deduced like a geometrical proposition. But to the wings of imagination, however smooth their flight, we must prefer the sandals of observed facts, the slow sandals ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... spoke oilily. His clean-shaven face was never without the remnants of a smile—a smile, though, which was not remarkable for its sincerity. Still, it had its value,—in the market,—for it was a commercial smile. A pair of small gray eyes were almost hidden by the obese curves of his cheeks; but you learned in a very short time that they kept a sharp and shrewd lookout from behind those ramparts. The two men sat down at opposite sides of the table, the owner guessing from the captain's manner that there was something in ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various

... are complete without him. Having benefited only to a limited extent under the will of his father, he is not generally reputed to be wealthy, but he is always extravagant. Yet he manages to steer clear of the painful consequences of writs with some astuteness. In middle-age he becomes obese, and cannot go the pace as formerly. His friends therefore abandon him, and he dies before he is fifty, in reduced circumstances, of an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various

... subdivided since the Revolution of 1789, into departments, arondissements, and cantons, is filled with chateaux, which, in the reign of Louis XV., were inhabited by those gold-be-spangled marquises, those idle, godless abbes, and those obese financiers, whom the secret memoirs of Grimm and Bachaumont, and the letters of the Marquis de Lauraguais, have held up to such unsparing ridicule and contempt. This milky and cheese-producing Brie, this inexhaustible Io, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... in a cafe. Not only had he elbow room in Marienbad, but he felt small, positively meagre, in comparison with the prize specimens he saw painfully progressing about the shaded walks or puffing like obese engines up the sloping roads to the Ruebezahl, the Egerlaender, the Panorama, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... said of him that he is volatile; that he flies from one task to another, finishing nothing; that his artistic tastes are the extravagant dreams of a Nero; that he loves publicity as a worn and obese soprano loves the centre of the stage; that his indiscretions would bring about the discharge of the most inconspicuous petty official. Others speak and write of him as a hero of mythology, as a mystic ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... ON VEGETABLE DIET, and this obese tendency checked, the flesh of the Chinese pig is extremely delicate and delicious; but when left to gorge almost exclusively on animal food, it becomes oily, coarse, and unpleasant. Perhaps there is no other instance in nature where the effect of rapid and perfect digestion is so well shown ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... decease, to illustrate what all good people were to become in the unknown world. How did you get out of the scrape which followed the remark of your downright eldest, remembering also the departure of a good-natured, obese, elderly neighbor,—"Then I thpothe Mithter Thimmonth ith a big angel"? So he probably is; but Simmons's two hundred pounds of earthliness did not suit your sentimentality quite as readily as the little fairy who always wore such clean pantalets and never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... a friend he saw an Armenian wedding. For servant he now took a cowardly and thievish lad named Nur, and, subsequently, he made the acquaintance of a Meccan youth, Mohammed, who was to become his companion throughout the pilgrimage. Mohammed was 18, chocolate brown, short, obese, hypocritical, cowardly, astute, selfish and affectionate. Burton not only purchased the ordinary pilgrim garb, but he also took the precaution to attach to his person "a star sapphire," the sight of which inspired his companions with "an almost reverential awe," ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... drowsily. "Thank you—thank everybody—" And he sank into an obese and noiseless slumber as the gray and silver curtain slowly fell. The applause, far from rousing him, merely soothed him; a honeyed smile hovered on his lips which formed the words "Thank you." That was all; the firing-line stirred, breathed deeply, and folded twelve soft white ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers

... saw him one morning of last summer, in the Green Park. Though short, even insignificant, in stature and with an obvious tendency to be obese, he had that unruffled, Olympian air, which is so sure a sign of the Blood Royal. In a suit of white linen he looked serenely cool, despite the heat. Perhaps I should have thought him, had I not been versed ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... the end of the journey; and she began to think of Marion with terror and vindictiveness, and this abstinence from a career became a sinister manifestation of that lack of spiritual sinew which had made her succumb to a bad man and handicap Richard with illegitimacy. She prefigured her swarthy and obese. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... another Napoleon, who, I am informed, slid down the Alps into Italy; the present descendant did not slide so far, and he shook himself, after the manner of a dog. I remarked with some surprise, that he was growing obese; whereas, the active labors of the campaign had reduced the dimensions of ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... classes of people suffered much in this particular, namely, the very fat and the very bony. Those whom nature had favored in form and feature, and who had acquired the art of sitting upright, look well enough in these old pictures of a past age. But the clumsy and obese, the slender and angular people may well be laughed at even through the shadowy retrospect ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... dim eyes took his master for a stranger, was warning the world against him. Jolyon gave his special whistle. Even at that distance of a hundred yards and more he could see the dawning recognition in the obese brown-white body. The old dog got off his haunches, and his tail, close-curled over his back, began a feeble, excited fluttering; he came waddling forward, gathered momentum, and disappeared over the edge of the fernery. Jolyon expected to meet him at the wicket gate, but Balthasar was not ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... nearest passenger—an obese travelling man who mopped a very red face,—the boy timidly held a Gloire de Dijon rose up to him and recited ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... runs in families, there is no question whatsoever. And, while with great care as to the diet and by proper exercise, obesity may, as a rule, be avoided in those predisposed, it none the less often will develop in spite of all measures taken against it. Some very obese people eat only one-half or less of what many thin people do; but in the former, everything seems to ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... murmur of voices apprised him of the coming of the men. Menocal entered the side door first, approaching heavily and sleepily the spot where the engineer waited. He had not put on coat or collar; his short figure appeared more than ever obese; his sweeping white moustache divided his plump, shiny brown face; and his air was that of one who must put up with vexatious interruptions because of the important position ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd

... his raging thirst and satiated the gnawing appetite of the obese, than which there is no crueller torment to an ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers

... Then the unclad and obese native lady, carrying a long pointed grass-basket on her back, who had squatted down in the high grass to smoke a pipe and administer maternal refreshment to a shiny black piccannin ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... canon perambulated, smoking the end of a cigarette, the delectable frivolity of which contrasted pleasantly with his great age. He nodded affably to other priests as they passed, a pair of young men, and one obese old creature with white hair and an expression of comfortable self-esteem. He removed his hat with a great and courteous sweep when a lady of his acquaintance crossed his path. The priests basking in the warmth were like four great black cats. It was indeed a pleasant spot, and contentment ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... obese, portly, pursy, burly, chubby, pampered, gross, squab, stout, pudgy; adipose; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... Alan Hawke cheerfully joined his obese and crafty friend and host, Ram Lal Singh. For an hour the soft, oily voice of the old jewel merchant flowed on in a purring monologue. The ease and mastery of the Conqueror's language showed that the usurer had well studied the masters of Delhi. Sixty years had given Ram Lal added cunning. ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... A big, obese, middle-aged civilian dressed in a hideous greenish suit, and wearing a pancake cap, sat opposite me in the compartment I had chosen. There was a hard, unfriendly look in his large, fat-encircled eyes, a big mustache curved straight ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... a Hedgehog until the enemy retires. It tries to escape, unrolls itself and is lost. The other does not stir from its posture of defence and resists successfully. Is this due to acquired caution? No, but to the impossibility of doing otherwise on the slippery surface of a table. Clumsy, obese, weak in the legs, curved into a hook like the common White Worm (The larva of the Cockchafer.—Translator's Note.), the Anoxia-larva is unable to move along a smooth surface; it writhes laboriously, lying on its side. It needs the shifting soil in ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... I might learn something. I'm like the Queen of Sheba—I'm not above learning. But you, my friend, would be afraid to try a new shaving soap. It isn't gravitation that holds the world in place; it's the lazy, obese cowardice of the people on it. All the same"—taking his hand and smiling encouragingly—"I'm going to haunt you ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... large &c. adj.; become large &c. (expand) 194. Adj. large, big; great &c. (in quantity) 31; considerable, bulky, voluminous, ample, massive, massy; capacious, comprehensive; spacious &c. 180; mighty, towering, fine, magnificent. corpulent, stout, fat, obese, plump, squab, full, lusty, strapping, bouncing; portly, burly, well-fed, full-grown; corn fed, gram fed; stalwart, brawny, fleshy; goodly; in good case, in good condition; in condition; chopping, jolly; chub faced, chubby faced. lubberly, hulky, unwieldy, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... impression of flabbiness which this man Blessington conveyed. As he dangled from the hook it was exaggerated and intensified until he was scarce human in his appearance. The neck was drawn out like a plucked chicken's, making the rest of him seem the more obese and unnatural by the contrast. He was clad only in his long night-dress, and his swollen ankles and ungainly feet protruded starkly from beneath it. Beside him stood a smart-looking police-inspector, who was ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... people even friendship is impossible. Such a one, in George's opinion, was this gurgling excrescence underneath the silk hat. He comprised in his single person practically all the qualities which George disliked most. He was, for a young man, extraordinarily obese. Already a second edition of his chin had been published, and the perfectly-cut morning coat which encased his upper section bulged out in an opulent semi-circle. He wore a little moustache, which to George's prejudiced eye seemed more a complaint ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... finished... It was about the feeling that I had when I stood on the steps of my hotel every morning before starting out to fetch Florence back from the bath. Natty, precise, well-brushed, conscious of being rather small amongst the long English, the lank Americans, the rotund Germans, and the obese Russian Jewesses, I should stand there, tapping a cigarette on the outside of my case, surveying for a moment the world in the sunlight. But a day was to come when I was never to do it again alone. You can imagine, therefore, what the coming of the Ashburnhams meant to me. I have forgotten ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... up, all smiles at the sight of so grand a lady. He had grown very obese, and very red about the neck; his linen might have been considerably cleaner, and his coat better brushed. But he seemed in excellent spirits, and glowed when his visitor began by saying that she wished to speak in confidence of ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... was obese and gloomy. His clothes were made in Paris, and on the ring finger of his left hand ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... the look of them this must be an influential community—people of some pretensions," said an obese elderly minister, who had seated himself by Phoebe, and whose eyes were dazzled by the display. "I never expected all this dress in ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... fleshy, rigid, depressed in centre when young, reflexed margin, at first involute, when full grown the surface becomes funnel-shaped and regular, even, smooth, without zones; flesh white. Stem 1 to 2 inches long, 1 to 2 inches thick, solid, obese, equal or obconical, slightly covered with powder (pruinose), white. Gills decurrent, crowded, narrow, scarcely broader than one line, obtuse at edge, regularly dividing by pairs from below upward (dichotomous), curved like a bow ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin

... not stand far away, and could see him well. He was a middle-aged man, prodigiously obese as though bloated, and almost black. Stas, who had an unusually keen sight, perceived that his face was tattooed. In one ear he wore a big ivory ring. He was dressed in a white jubha and had a white ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... which, except for a shilling concert, and a peep at the pictures, is desperate to me. This is my fault, not London's: I know it is a lassitude and weakness of soul that no more loves the ceaseless collision of Beaux Esprits, than my obese ill-jointed carcase loves bundling about in coaches and steamers. And, as you say, the dirt, both of earth and atmosphere, in London, is a real bore. But enough of that. It is sufficient that it is more pleasant to me to sit in ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... Punjabi farmer going to a fair, and to a woman without a veil. Lurgan Sahib laughed immensely, and begged Kim to stay as he was, immobile for half an hour—cross-legged, ash-smeared, and wild-eyed, in the back room. At the end of that time entered a hulking, obese Babu whose stockinged legs shook with fat, and Kim opened on him with a shower of wayside chaff. Lurgan Sahib—this annoyed Kim—watched the Babu and not ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... hangings of that color, will fatten the occupants! Shakespeare's "glass wherein the noble youth did dress themselves" was not so practical a possession as this. Surely, hereafter those who would divest themselves of their lean and hungry look may grow obese at will, and turn the scale at the very pound required; and this, too, by no such regimen as the Oriental one of rice and indolence, but merely by passing a season under a violet dome or a blue crystal green-house. Such a remedy is good tidings for all the wan, the haggard and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... An obese grey rat toddled along the side of the crypt, moving the pebbles. An old stager: greatgrandfather: he knows the ropes. The grey alive crushed itself in under the plinth, wriggled itself in under ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... the procession, carried on a platform gaily decorated with gaudy cloths, borne on the shoulders of four men, was a figure of Ganesha. The obese, four-armed, jovial son of Shiva, bobbing in the rhythmic stride of his carriers, seemed to nod his elephant head at the horseman approvingly, wishing him luck as was the wont of Ganesha. The procession ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... with a trace of impatience against unnecessary repetition. Yet he was suddenly struck with the odd thought that Sir Paul certainly did not know him, but only odd bits of him; and he was doubtful whether he knew Sir Paul. He saw an obese man of sixty sitting in the very chair that a few moments ago had been occupied by Carthew the chauffeur, a man with big purplish features and a liverish eye, a man smoking a plutocratic and heavenly cigar and eating it ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... rhubarb-coloured coat of the sort which, I believe, are called Taglionis, and which have no waist-buttons, and made a pretence, as it were, to have no waists, but are in reality adopted by the fat in order to give them a waist. Nothing easier for an obese man than to have a waist; he has but to pinch his middle part a little, and the very fat on either side pushed violently forward MAKES a waist, as it were, and our worthy perfumer's figure was that of a bolster cut almost in ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... old man, corpulent and red-faced, plethoric and apoplectic looking, a man so obese that he seemed bursting out of his skin. He had belonged to one of the suppressed religious orders; he talked only of religious matters; and from the very first manifested the most profound contempt for Pepe Rey. The latter appeared every moment more unable to accommodate himself to a society ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... GA-GA." The voluptuous surroundings of Nepenthe, the abundant food, adoration of disciples, alcoholic and carnal debaucheries, had impaired his tough Monjik frame and blunted his wit, working havoc with that energy and peasant craftiness which once ruled an Emperor's Court. His body was obese. His mind was in a state of advanced putrefaction. Even his personal cleanliness left something to be desired. Sitting there, puffy and pasty, in a darkened room, he looked more than ever like some obscene vegetable that has grown up in ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... calico over his shoulders and a string of tigers' tails round his waist could not make his imposing figure ridiculous. In early days he was an athlete and a fine shot; and though, as years went on, his voracious appetite rendered him conspicuously obese, he was every inch a ruler.... Visitors were much struck by his capacity for government: very little went on in his wide dominions of which he was not instantly and accurately informed.' He was an arbitrary ruler, but not ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... with lobsters, and ever kind to crabs, And be not disrespectful to cuttle-fish or dabs; Chase not the Cochin-China, chaff not the ox obese, And babble not of feather-beds in company with geese. Be tender with the tadpole, and let the limpet thrive, Be merciful to mussels, don't skin your eels alive; When talking to a turtle don't mention calipee— Be always kind to ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... The continued abuse of alcohol ends at last in complete dementia or general pseudo-paralysis. The body is at first obese, but rapidly loses flesh, the skin becomes greasy and damp, owing to hypersecretion of the sebaceous and sudoriparous glands, and soils the garments. Memory becomes enfeebled, speech uncertain and defective (dysarthria), the association of ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... the world with her beauty and accomplishments when she bursts upon it from her mansion in Spring Gardens, and, as you foresee, will presently come into contact with the unseen objet aime. Perhaps the words "prime minister" suggest to you a wrinkled or obese sexagenarian; but pray dismiss the image. Lord Rupert Conway has been "called while still almost a youth to the first situation which a subject can hold in the universe," and even leading articles and a resume of the debates have not conjured up a dream ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... Newbolt's ponderous step on the stairs, was broken by Bingo's dashing, with ear-piercing barks, into the room: Eleanor took him on her knee, and Maurice, giving the little black nose a kindly squeeze, looked around in pantomimic horror of the obese upholstery, and Rogers groups on the tops of bookcases full of ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... course, as we have said, it is our method—or the method of orthodoxy—way in which all conclusions are reached—to have some awfully eminent, or preponderantly plump, authorities with us whenever we can—in this case, however, we feel just a little apprehensive in being caught in such excellently obese, but somewhat negativized, company: ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... would take his pieces of silver, though they were the price of her soul; the policeman on the pavement, who would never think of protecting her; and the whole hideous city which benignly profited by saloons. She watched another couple down at the end of the room—an obese man and a young, pretty girl, who was hysterically drunk. Not because she had attended the Women's Christian Temperance Union at Panama and heard them condemn "the demon rum," but because the sickish smell of the alcohol was all about her now, she suddenly ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... reduced. Drugs were booming, and the druggist, not satisfied with the normal hugeness of his profits, slipped into the fashion and fleeced all round with unprecedented flagrancy. A purgative proclamation—classing pills as "necessaries"—was called for, but it never came. Obese folk, fearful that their flesh was falling off in lumps, drank freely of cod liver oil. On the other hand, fragile creatures of delicate mould thought black tea not only cheaper but ever so much nicer. Of course, the poor chemist was not responsible for tastes. He had much to answer for; but ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... without feet kicked fantastically with collapsible flourishes; and there were long white garments that, taking the wind fairly through their neck openings edged with lace, became for a moment violently distended as by the passage of obese and invisible bodies. On these days you could make out that ship at a great distance by the multi-coloured grotesque riot going on abaft her ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad

... get married? You're just the kind of girl I like—tip-top, you know. I like a girl with style about her. Come, say yes." And here the crude outlines of something like a joke, for the first time in Mr. Margent's history, began to be visible to him in the dim recesses of his obese mind. "Let's make it buyer sixty days," and he laughed until his small eyes ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... times as much as an ordinary person. When traveling he finds the greatest difficulty in entering an ordinary railway carriage, and as a rule contents himself in the luggage van. Figure 171 represents an extremely fat woman with a well-developed beard. To end this list of obese individuals, we mention an old gentleman living in San Francisco who, having previously been thin, gained 14 pounds in his seventieth year and 14 pounds each ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... a mission high: Mysterious omens of the earth and sky He knew to read; his medicine could find In time of need the buffalo, and bind In sleep the senses of the enemy. Perhaps not wholly a deliberate cheat, And yet dissimulation and deceit Oozed from his form obese at every pore. Skilled by long practice in the priestly art, To chill with superstitious fear the heart, And versed in all the legendary lore, He knew each herb and root that healing bore; But lest his flock might grow as wise as he, Disguised their use with solemn mummery. When ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... with all his might to find excuses for her. It would not make her treachery so intolerable if he could persuade himself that Haddo had qualities which might explain her infatuation. But as his enemy stood before his fancy, monstrously obese, vulgar, and overbearing, a shudder passed through him. The thought of Margaret in that man's arms tortured him as though his flesh were torn ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham

... us and we ventured into the garden. Coming down a pathway we saw an austere, swarthy, obese man of the middle height. He was white-gloved, and wore a red fez, a sort of Zouave upper garment of blue, with burnous, baggy trousers, white stockings, and Turkish slippers. It was the Shereef. I had agreed to open the interview, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... the shelter of the wood, many of the fugitives turned and fired, but again fled as their pursuers came up with them. Tom and Gerald having assisted to capture the flag were somewhat behind the rest. As they ran on they saw the obese, though gallant, commander just before them, flourishing his sword and shouting, "On, lads, on! Tally ho! tally ho! We'll have their brushes before long. Make mincemeat of the rascals! Tally ho, boys ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... remarkably round, prominent eyes. He was clad in the usual Eastern robes, richly worked, over which he wore a shirt of chain-mail, and on his head a helmet, with mail flaps, an attire that gave the general effect of an obese Crusader of the early Norman period without ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... in the same manner, except that probably the Chleuh boys with sidelong eyes and clean caftans would come instead of the singing-girls, and weave the arabesque of their dance in place of the runic pattern of the singing. But the result would always be the same: a prolonged state of obese ecstasy culminating in the collapse of huge heaps of snoring muslin on the divans against the wall. Finally at the week's end the wool-merchant and his friends would all ride back ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... figure, that sustained the pale oval of the face, till his forehead struck the rock. Plunging his hand into the ashes, he poured a fistful with inarticulate low cries over his gray hairs; and the agitation of that obese little body on its knees had a lamentable and grotesque inconsequence, as inexplicable in itself as the sorrow of a madman. Full of wonder before his abject collapse, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... plump hands upon his widespread knees, and leaned as far forward, in his eager anxiety, as his obese figure would permit. ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... red velvet curtains, held back by tasselled silken cords, draped the long windows; fluted columns at regular intervals upheld the ceiling; the floor was polished and slippery; the tables shone with white and silver. An obese and tremendous darkey in swallowtail waved a white-gloved hand at them, turned ponderously, and preceded them down the aisle with the pomp of a drum major. His dignity was colossal, awe inspiring, remote. Their progress ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... only one to the million; but I do take on me to say that the individual Herr who executed Doctor Faustus at Homburg that night had everything to learn, except what he had to unlearn. His person was obese; his delivery of the words was mouthing, chewing, and gurgling; and he uttered the notes in tune, but without point, pathos, or passion; a steady lay-clerk from York or Durham Cathedral would have done a little better, because ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... has been in this hospital for the past eight months. We do not believe him sick, or that he has been sick, but completely worthless. He is obese and a malingerer to such an extent that he is almost an imbecile—worthlessness, obesity, and imbecility and laziness. He is totally unfit for the Invalid Corps or for any other ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... good family, born in London in 1790, and educated we believe at one of the great universities. We have heard him say, that in early life he was as thin almost as Calvin Edson, but for the last fifteen or twenty years he was the most obese and plethoric-looking person in New-York—a sort of Lewis, or Lambert, of astonishing breadth and rotundity. We must not enter into details respecting his domestic life, but it may be mentioned that he was a party to a clandestine marriage, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... the waist and bathed in cold water; even then it seemed to him that his flesh was heavy and dull and yellow, that he was growing obese and out of all condition. He put on a clean shirt and collar, sat down on his bed and tried to think the thing out. To whomsoever he had done harm in the past he would now spare Maggie and his father. He was surprised at the rush of ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... the ostentatiously armed guards stepped outside and closed the door as Gibson greeted the obese man sitting across the button-studded expanse of desk. The scientist was under no illusion as to the vagueness of the title "Chairman." He was facing the absolute power of the Centaurian planets—which, in a few months' time, would be the same as saying the ruler of ...
— Irresistible Weapon • Horace Brown Fyfe

... from two hallway taps, one to each storey. The honoured guest and the exacting went to bed by lamplight: others put up with candlesticks: gas burned only in the corridors and the restaurant— asthmatic jets that, spluttering blue within globes obese, semi-opaque, and yellowish, went well with furnishings and decorations of the Second Empire to which years had lent a mellow and somehow rakish dinginess; since nothing was ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... pointed to a cushion on the nobleman's off side, on which perplexed Jill squatted in imitation of the others. The party consisted of the aforementioned trio, two flash-looking English women, who had in tow a certain type of man who is only to be found on board ship, an obese German, a French widow whose weeds grew more from utility than necessity, and a dapper little Frenchman who twinkled his over-manicured fingers for the benefit of a healthy, jolly looking Australian girl sitting uncomfortably on the adjacent ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... ardor, and launch themselves forth to go to play upon the blossoming turf of the celestial garden; others stretch forth their hands to their half-resurrected mothers. The remark may also be made that all the devils and vices are obese, while the angels and virtues are thin and slender. The painter wishes to mark the preponderance of matter in the one class and of spirit ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... not suffer even the sluggish to sit still, but if nothing else will do, pins a cracker to their skirts, in the shape of a tender passion, or some other whim, and so sets them bouncing in their own obese and clumsy way, to the trouble of others as well as their own discomfort. It is a hard thing, but so it is; the comfort of absolute stagnation is nowhere permitted us. And such, so multifarious and intricate our own mutual dependencies, that it is next to impossible to marry a ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu



Words linked to "Obese" :   rotund, weighty, fat, obesity



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