thickset
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: /ˈθɪkˌsɛt/
Forms: form: more thickset
form: most thickset
form: thick-set
Etymology: From thick + set.
Senses: examples: text: a thickset, muscular figure
text: a thickset workhorse
text: He was a thick set man, and of a strong Constitution […]
ref: 1654, Samuel Clarke, “The Life of Theodore Beza”, in The Marrow of Ecclesiastical History, London: T.V, page 885:
text: […] he directed me to a small chink in the board partition, through which I could see a thick set brawny fellow, with a fierce countenance,
ref: 1748, [Tobias Smollett], chapter 8, in The Adventures of Roderick Random. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: […] [William Strahan] for J[ohn] Osborn […], →OCLC, page 52:
text: Ralph, who was a thickset clownish figure, arrived at his full strength, and conscious of the most complete personal superiority, laughed contemptuously at the threats of the slight-made stripling.
ref: 1820, [Walter Scott], chapter VII, in The Abbot. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Company, and John Ballantyne, […], →OCLC, page 146:
text: The contrast was as striking as it could have been eighteen years before, when Rigg was a most unengaging kickable boy, and Raffles was the rather thick-set Adonis of bar-rooms and back-parlors.
ref: 1871–1872, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter 41, in Middlemarch […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book IV:
text: More than ever Min hated her own thickset, healthy body, her round, red face with its small gray eyes, the mop of auburn hair which Aunt Julie braided so tightly […]
ref: 1926, Nalbro Bartley, chapter 1, in Her Mother’s Daughter, New York: George H. Doran:
text: The glass door opened and there entered a thick-set, mud-bespattered, weather-beaten dock laborer with bare head and bare feet.
ref: 1952, Nikos Kazantzakis, chapter 1, in Carl Wildman, transl., Zorba the Greek, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, translation of Βίος και πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά [Víos kai politeía tou Aléxi Zormpá], →ISBN, page 3:
roman: Víos kai politeía tou Aléxi Zormpá
text: Things edible would always be respected by a man who had nearly starved to death. The laborers, too, in white smocks, broad and heavy, a thickset personnel, butchers’ men.
ref: 1970, Saul Bellow, chapter 6, in Mr. Sammler’s Planet, Penguin, published 1977, page 279:
text: Standing in her entrance, two men in white silk suits and butterfly-looking lace bow ties, black instrument cases by their side and black-brimmed white hats in their hands–my father, Nestor Castillo, thin and broad-shouldered, and Uncle Cesar, thickset and immense.
ref: 1989, Oscar Hijuelos, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 4:
synonyms: word: big-boned
word: stocky
word: stout
word: big-boned
word: bulbous
word: corpulent
word: curvy
raw_tags: of women
word: Daniel Lambertish
word: eurysome
word: famine resistant
word: gravitationally challenged
word: horizontally challenged
word: obese
word: rotund
word: round
word: spherical
word: big as a house
word: bloated
word: blubbery
word: fat as a cow
word: fat as a pig
word: gross
word: lardy
word: poddy
word: porcine
word: porky
word: tubby
antonyms: sleek
slender
slim
svelte
willowy
glosses: Having a relatively short, heavy build.
examples: text: a thickset wood
text: a thickset hedge
text: 1581, Thomas Newton (translator), Thebais in Seneca His Tenne Tragedies, London: Thomas Marsh, Act 2, p. 48,
[…] let me be allowde
To lurke behinde this Craggy Rocke, or els my selfe to hyde
On backside of some thickset hedge:
text: 1612, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, London: M. Lownes et al., Song 1, p. 11,
[…] Corineus ran
With slaughter through the thick-set squadrons of the foes;
text: […] though his Beard not oft corrected,
Yet neare it growes, not like a Beard neglected
From head to heele, his body hath all over,
A Quick-set, Thick-set nat’rall hairy cover.
ref: 1635, John Taylor, The olde, old, very olde man: or the age and long life of Thomas Par, London: Henry Gosson:
text: The beauteous Love-Eye burning in the Heart;
From whence Loves Centres endless multiply,
As thick-set Spangles of the Sky,
Raising a Sting of Joy in ev’ry Part.
ref: 1696, Jane Leade, “Solomon’s Porch: or the Beautiful Gate of Wisdom’s Temple”, in A Fountain of Gardens, London:
text: His [the boar’s] Neck shoots up a thick-set thorny Wood;
His bristled Back a Trench impal’d appears,
And stands erected, like a Field of Spears.
ref: 1700, “Meleager and Atalanta, Out of the Eighth Book of Ovid’s Metamorphosis”, in John Dryden, transl., Fables Ancient and Modern, London: Jacob Tonson, page 106:
text: My heart is like an appletree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
ref: 1862, Christina Rossetti, “A Birthday”, in Goblin Market and Other Poems, London: Macmillan, page 56:
text: It was for the arc of lanterned boats to close in and to form the thickset audience, armed and impenetrable.
ref: 1950, Mervyn Peake, chapter 77, in Gormenghast, London: Eyre and Spottiswoode:
synonyms: dense
thick
antonyms: sparse
thin
glosses: Densely crowded together; made up of things that are densely crowded together; closely planted.
examples: text: a gully thickset with brambles
text: 1583, John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, London: John Day, Book 4, “The tragicall historie of Gregorie the vij. otherwise named Hildebrand,” p. 177,
[…] in a vessell being thick set with sharpe nayles, he tormented him to the poynt of death:
text: The sides of the Church were so thick set with Pictures, that it seem’d to be made in imitation of Plato’s Den, where one could see nothing but shadowes.
ref: 1660, Nathaniel Ingelo, Bentivolio and Urania, London: Richard Marriot, Book 3, p. 134:
text: A huge cherry-tree grew outside, so close that its boughs tapped against the house, and it was so thick-set with blossoms that hardly a leaf was to be seen.
ref: 1908, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 4, in Anne of Green Gables:
text: […] he came to the house of the King of the Gnomes, which was inside a mountain and as thickset with jewels as the grass with dew on a fine morning.
ref: 1929, Carl Grabo, chapter 7, in The Cat in Grand-Father’s House, Chicago: Laidlaw Brothers, page 99:
glosses: Densely covered (with something).