More or less corpulent. Used by Chaucer. (N.E.D.)
1788. To be fleshy in their bodies, and ruddy in their cheeks, is their greatest dread.—Mass. Spy, Sept. 11.
1789. Ran away, a Mulatto Man…. He is a likely, sensible, and plausible fellow, fleshy and well made.—Maryland Journal, Oct. 16.
1807. A large, fleshy, rugged, strong, active child.—Mass. Spy, Aug. 26.
1821. They [the English] are more frequently fleshy [than the New-Englanders].—T. Dwight, ‘Travels,’ iv. 463.
1824. Mack is a tall fleshy man, of ferocious aspect.—Mass. Spy, April 28: from the Berkshire Star.
1836. A highly respectable and very fleshy old lady.—Phila. Public Ledger, Oct. 4.
1837. “The Fleshy One” is the subject of one of J. C. Neal’s ‘Charcoal Sketches.’
1838. Nowhere in the West have I seen a sleeker, fleshier, happier-looking set of mortals than the blacks of these old [French] villages [on the Mississippi]…. Where will you search for a fleshier, sleeker, swarthier-looking race than these French villagers?—E. Flagg, ‘The Far West,’ ii. 165, 182.
1840. Mrs. Ferret is what we call a fleshy or lusty woman: she weighed two hundred and twelve, in Neal Hopper’s new one-sided patent scale at the mill.—John P. Kennedy, ‘Quodlibet, p. 110 (1860).
1848. There stood Deacon Morris, a short, broad, grave, and fleshy man of fifty, beneath the pulpit, giving out the hymn, while Old Hundred, by twice as many voices, was mingled with the notes of birds in the surrounding trees.—Dr. D. Drake, ‘Pioneer Life in Kentucky,’ p. 190 (1870).
1856. A fleshy gentleman had received a copy of the “Pictorial,” and retired to the foot of the Flag-staff to peruse it.—G. H. Derby (‘John Phœnix’), ‘Phœnixiana,’ p. 135.
1856. She was clear out o’ breath, for she ’s quite a fleshy woman.—Whitcher, ‘The Widow Bedott Papers,’ No. 26.
1857. I am a large man—my cousin Abimeleck calls me “fleshy.”—Harper’s Weekly, i. p. 536 (Aug. 22).
1858. Mrs. Jones, who is a very fleshy woman, undulated and shook like a mighty jelly.—Mary Ann’s Wedding, in Oregon Weekly Times, Oct. 30.
1867. He is much fleshier than while at Riley.—Letter of Gen. Custer, April 10: Mrs. Custer, ‘Tenting on the Plains,’ p. 554 (1888).
