# flabby

/ˈfɫæbi/ (US) · /flˈæbi/ (UK)

Source: https://englishreference.com/word/flabby
Updated: 2026-08-27

## Senses

### 1. soft and loose

adjective · CEFR B2

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

For teachers: 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.

### 3. lacking acidity in wine

adjective · CEFR C2 · Technical

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

For teachers: 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.

### 4. mathematical sheaves

adjective · CEFR C2 · Technical

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

For teachers: 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.

## Examples

- The mathematician simplified the flabby structure to make it more useful.
- In category theory, a flabby sheaf is one that lacks the necessary constraints to be considered a fine sheaf.
- The proof failed because the initial assumptions led to a flabby set of conditions that were too broad to provide a meaningful conclusion for the specific problem at hand.

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