Home UK English overweight

Meaning of overweight in English:

overweight

adjective

  • 1Above a weight considered normal or desirable.

    ‘she was a stone overweight’
    • ‘If overweight, her desirable weight gain is significantly less, about 15 to 25 pounds.’
    • ‘Balance caloric intake with physical activity and lose weight if currently overweight or obese.’
    • ‘In sharp contrast, her junk-food-eating brother who loves hamburgers is massively overweight and so are her mother and father.’
    • ‘It can also be used to determine if people are at a healthy weight, overweight or obese.’
    • ‘As long as you're not considerably overweight for your height and age according to your doctor, don't worry about it.’
    • ‘Overestimation of height and underestimation of weight in overweight people will magnify underestimation of body mass index.’
    • ‘The evidence for the effectiveness of interventions for weight loss among overweight adults, compared with obese adults, is limited.’
    • ‘Even with extremely overweight children, weight loss should be gradual.’
    • ‘The 71-year-old owner has brought in professionals to help his overweight employees lose weight.’
    • ‘‘Gee, look Cindy, they got gondolas,’ crooned an overweight woman to her massive friend.’
    • ‘A national poll of more than 2000 men asked whether they considered themselves underweight, normal weight, overweight or obese.’
    • ‘Overall, there is no evidence that low-fat diets are any better than low-calorie diets in achieving weight loss in overweight or obese people.’
    • ‘It took ten seconds before he emerged, a medium height, slightly overweight man in an expensive dress outfit.’
    • ‘Thirty-one percent of children are overweight or obese.’
    • ‘Therefore, primary preventive strategies may include measures to avoid weight gain, or to achieve weight loss in overweight patients.’
    • ‘Athletic women who are underweight at the start of the pregnancy commonly gain more weight, while overweight women may gain less.’
    • ‘Bulimics tend to be of normal weight to slightly overweight.’
    • ‘If you are overweight, losing weight may help you feel better.’
    • ‘Most of the women in the study who wanted to lose weight were not overweight.’
    • ‘I was overweight, but I managed to reduce my weight and have maintained it for the last 10 years.’
    fat, obese, morbidly obese, stout, corpulent, gross, fleshy, plump, portly, chubby, rotund, podgy, roly-poly, paunchy, pot-bellied, beer-bellied, bloated, flabby, Falstaffian, big, large, ample, well fed, well upholstered, well padded, broad in the beam, bulky, outsize, massive, heavy
    View synonyms
    1. 1.1Above an allowed weight.
      ‘an overweight lorry’
      • ‘Despite police monitoring the number of overweight lorries using the B3080 when the restriction was introduced, some have not stopped flouting the rules.’
      • ‘One elderly woman has launched her own campaign for a CCTV camera crackdown on overweight lorries illegally passing through the town centre.’
      • ‘Five drivers were reported for allegedly having overweight lorries, and received immediate prohibition notices.’

  • 2Finance
    Having more investment in a particular area than is normal or desirable.

    ‘two of the top three overweight sectors in the US market’

noun

mass noun

  • Excessive or extra weight.

    ‘surgical procedures for overweight’
    • ‘Only two other comparable studies have examined later adult risk in relation to both childhood and adult overweight, and these used body mass index as a measure of obesity at both ages.’
    • ‘Growth charts, ideal body weight, and body mass index were mostly used to assess and monitor overweight.’
    • ‘Most people associate extreme overweight with extreme forms of the same behaviors as those that make the rest of us gain weight - eating too much and not moving.’
    • ‘To help explain this apparent paradox, we propose that numerous vicious cycles are acting as ‘accelerators’ that maintain and even increase overweight.’
    • ‘Because of the difficulty in maintaining weight loss over time, prevention continues to be the most viable option for controlling overweight.’

verb

[with object]

  • 1Put too much weight on; overload.

    ‘try not to overweight the boxes’
    as adjective overweighted ‘an overweighted boat paddled by clumsy oarsmen’
    • ‘Wallowing in the aftermath of such bereavements, she overweights her plots with aching losses.’
    • ‘Conversely, the overweighted ball is generally used to enhance shoulder strength and power.’
    • ‘A while back I discussed how the powers that be will do ‘whatever it takes’ to keep this overweighted barge afloat.’
    • ‘She was significantly overweighted, and the quick release valve for her integrated weights was inoperable.’
    • ‘An overweighted diver will have to put extra air into a BC or drysuit to maintain neutral buoyancy.’
    1. 1.1Finance Invest in (a market sector, industry, etc.) to a greater than normal degree.
      ‘we have overweighted the banking sector’
      as adjective overweighted ‘we were overweighted in technology last year’

Pronunciation

overweight

/əʊvəˈweɪt/