Definition

1. Adjective:
   • Causing weight gain: Describes food or a diet that is likely to make a person or animal gain weight, typically because it is high in calories.
   • Used for making animals heavier before slaughter: Refers to the process or conditions intended to increase an animal's weight, specifically to prepare it for being killed for meat.

Usage

• The word "fattening" is used to describe foods, ingredients, or practices that promote weight gain. It often carries a negative connotation in human nutrition, suggesting something unhealthy or to be avoided for weight management. In agriculture, it is a neutral, descriptive term for a phase of livestock production.

Examples

• Adjective:
  • Many people avoid desserts because they are considered fattening.
  • The farmer moved the cattle to a fattening pen for their final few months.
  • Potato chips and sugary drinks are fattening snacks.

Advanced Usage

• "fattening up": This phrasal form emphasizes the process of causing weight gain, often for a specific purpose.
  • They are fattening up the turkey for Thanksgiving.
  • (Figurative) He's been fattening up his savings account for a year.

Variants and Related Words

• Fatten (verb): To make or become fat or fatter.
  • The farmer needs to fatten the pigs before the fair.
• Fat (noun/adjective): The substance or quality of being overweight.

Synonyms

• Caloric: Relating to calories; high-calorie.
• Rich: (Of food) containing a lot of fat, butter, eggs, etc., and likely to cause fullness or weight gain.

Antonyms

• Dietetic: Relating to diet or controlled food intake.
• Low-calorie: Containing few calories.

Related Phrases/Idioms

• "Fattening fodder": A specific term in farming for food given to animals to fatten them.
• "Fattening food": A common collocation for food that causes weight gain.

Adjective

1. subject to or used in the process of finishing or fattening up for slaughter
   • a fattening hog
   • fattening pens