English Reference

Word

flabby

Phoneticsflab·by

US/ˈfɫæbi/

UK/flˈæbi/

Definitions

01soft and loose

B2

adj. soft, loose, and not firm, especially when talking about a person's body or muscles.

adj. lacking firmness or muscle tone; yielding easily to the touch and hanging loose.

“He started going to the gym because he felt his stomach was getting flabby.”

“After months of inactivity following the injury, his once-athletic frame had become noticeably flabby and lacked its former definition.”

Synonyms

flaccidsoftloose

Antonyms

03lacking acidity in wine

C2 · Cooking

adj. describing wine that tastes flat because it does not have enough acid.

adj. lacking the necessary acidity to balance the sweetness or alcohol, resulting in a flat or dull mouthfeel.

“This white wine is a bit flabby and would be better with more citrus notes.”

“In exceptionally hot vintages, the grapes may lose their natural acidity, producing flabby wines that lack the ageing potential of cooler years.”

Technical

Synonyms

Antonyms

04mathematical sheaves

C2 · Math

adj. a technical term for a specific type of mathematical structure called a sheaf.

adj. describing a sheaf where every section over an open set can be extended to a global section.

“The professor explained why a flabby sheaf is useful in this specific proof.”

“The flabby sheaf property ensures that the restriction map from the global sections to the sections over any open subset is surjective.”

Technical

Synonyms

flasque

Etymology

From a variant of flappy, from flap (“to hang loose”). Compare English dialectal flapsy (“flabby”), Middle Dutch flabbe (“a slap in the face; a fan-blade; a hair ribbon; a wagging tongue”), Middle Low German flabbe (“a gaping mouth; a chatterbox”), Danish flab (“the jaw; cheeks; a malapert”), Swedish flabb, fläff (“the hanging underlip of an animal; guffaw; driveller”), German Flabbe (“a gob; muzzle”).

Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Domain

Mathematics

This entry

Level
C1 · Advanced
Frequency
Occasional
Updated

Scan code

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English Reference