Definition of "plumpitude"

Alternative form of plumptitude.

1. (uncountable) The quality or state of being plump.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • And yet glorious, and beautiful as is the present season, we have a greater fondness for “Appled autumn, golden cheeked and tan;” when the grape is purpling on the trellis and the pippin hangs goldenly from the richly laden boughs; when the ripe yellow corn is bursting its husks, and the big pumpkins are mellowing, rich, and ruddily; when in the forests the ripened nuts drop thick, and the squirrels are gathering in their winter stores; when the birds and the rabbits are of a nice plumpitude, and the fat finned creatures of the stream seem to put on all their attractions to lure us to their destruction—at this season it is glorious to be with nature, to clamber in the brisk air up the mountain side, and to watch the ever-changing hues of the kaleidoscopic forests.

     1853 August 20, The New York Journal; an Illustrated Literary Periodical, volume I, New York, N.Y.: P. D. Orvis, […], published 1854, page 118, column 1

   • An ingenious English inventor proposes to remedy the want of bust in ladies of “a given thinness” by a jacket, to be inflated by the wearer to the proper shape, and, as Willis would say, “plumpitude.”

     1861 March 30, Evening Star, volume XVII, number 2.531, Washington, D.C., page , column 1

   • If Miss McFlimsey has neat ankles, she can wear short dresses: if she has clumsy ones she can wear a trail; if she is inclined to be (pardon the word) “scrawny,” she can indulge in expensive skirts and protuberant “panniers;” if inclined to embonpoint, she can discard these and “gore” her robes; if her neck and arms are exquisitely moulded, she can undrape their dazzling charms; if bone predominates over plumpitude, she can cover them from the gaze of flying eyes; if she has a disease of the spine, she need not sport “the Grecian bend;” if she is unfortunately healthy, she can call in the aid of that modern deformity—and so on, ad infinitum and ad nauseum.[sic]

     1869 January 10, “The Dress Question”, in Daily Missouri Republican, volume XLVII, number 9, St. Louis, Mo., page , column 3

   • It is the custom as old as the century for French and English children to wear socks or short stockings until they are old enough to go into jackets and trousers, or, being of the other sex, wear long dresses and put up their hair. The poor little beggars whose parents are rich suffer quite as much with cold legs as the real article that knowns[sic] not where his next meal is to come from. It is fashion that dictates this exposure of plumpitude and redness, and it must be said the French child’s bare legs are not uncomely, even though the well clad grown-up shivers at the sight.

     1894 September 27, “Keep the Legs Warm. The Dangerous Custom of Providing Children with Insufficient Clothing.”, in The Buffalo Commercial, page 7, column 1

   • When I first knew Irma, her bosom plus her plump shoulder blades surrounded her head like a circular shelf. In those days she was a soda fountain girl, and that was so long before the phrase “manpower shortage” had been born one had to be good to hold even that job. Now what has Irma and her plumpitude and milk shakes got to do with fashion you ask.

     1943 November 24, Mary Hampton, “There Goes Irma”, in The Sacramento Bee, volume 173, number 28,128, Sacramento, Calif., page 13, column 2

   • I’m going to start a support group of us fortyish guys with this problem. LUMPS, we’ll call our group. Losing Unwanted Midriff Plumpitude Sensibly.

     1994, Sam Cook, “[Gerbils and other realities of the forties] Too much me”, in If This Is Mid-Life… Where’s the Crisis?, Duluth, Minn.: Pfeifer-Hamilton, page 120

   • But several people have complained about my references to what we might delicately call her plumpitude. A woman in Paramus, N.J., writes, “We often make references to society as not accepting of weight … and repeat ‘society this’ and ‘society that,’ and we sometimes wonder who is this ‘evil’ society that does this horrible thing to us? And after reading your article, I realized it’s people like you.”

     1999 May 26, Tom Shales, “Monica sought her own publicity”, in Enterprise-Record, 146th year, number 195, page 10A, column 1

   • I have to say it again, my Dearest Friend. What a wonderful Comedown for the Godhead! What a wonderful Comeuppance for Humankind! That’s because You, Lord God, Creator, Bellows Maker of All That Breathes, deigned to come to my hovel of a soul; once there, to fatten up the leanness of my soul with the plumpitude of Your Sacrament; that’s to say, with the plenitude of Your Divinity and Humanity.

     2000, Thomas à Kempis, “[The Sacrament of the Altar: How to Prepare for It & What It Tastes Like] Frequency”, in William Griffin, transl., The Imitation of Christ: How Jesus Wants Us to Live […] A Contemporary Version, HarperSanFrancisco, page 238

   • Would Minister Jowell propose that, for balance, magazines offer a smattering of models with spots, crow’s feet or jowls? Will modelling agencies have stoutness quotas? Will photographic pulchritude from now on require plumpitude?

     2000 April 12, Meghan Cox Gurdon, “Teen mags are only skin deep: Adolescent girls don’t need the state to censor images of lithe models”, in National Post, volume 2, number 145, page A16

   • Contest applications, rules, guidelines and helpful hints on pumpkin plumpitude are available at the Cascade County Extension Office in the Westgate Mall.

     2004 July 25, Kathleen A. Schultz, “Pick portliest pumpkins for pound pledges”, in Great Falls Tribune, 120th year, number 73, section M, page 1

   • As you get older, and lose facial plumpitude, you tend to look more mature.

     2008 July 5, Peter McKay, “‘Cremation, then throw me in the river’”, in The Herald, Dubois County, Ind., page 4, column 1

   • But perhaps the chat show route was a fine idea in hindsight, for who else but Waters is going to cast a fat girl as the neighbourhood sweetheart? All this pro-plumpitude is sadly undercut by the demise of Divine.

     2010, Garry Mulholland, “Hairspray”, in Popcorn: Fifty Years of Rock ’n’ Roll Movies, Orion Books, page 283

   • A pale Arbell Swan-Neck joined them, accompanied by the now well-fed IdrisPukke, Kleist and also Riba. For all her loss of plumpitude during the preceding months, she was still and always would be a striking contrast to her mistress. She was shorter by nearly eight inches, dark, with brown eyes, and still as curved and abundant as Arbell was sinuous and blond and slim. They were as different to look at as a dove and a swan.

     2010, Paul Hoffman, The Left Hand of God, Dutton, page 338

   • Your own appeal is also a factor, and it’s probably narrowed by things like not being 22 and your plumpitude, if any.

     2012 February 24, Amy Alkon, “Sky not limit for boyfriend options”, in The Palm Beach Post, volume 104, number 17, page 2D, column 3

   • Mom eventually returned, in a body cast that stretched from her neck to her ass, like the most unflattering girdle, and lay helpless on her high Victorian bed for months, eating ice cream and homemade strawberry compote. She had to eat it: if she gained or lost five pounds she’d have to go back to the hospital to get a new cast put on. She’d worked out exactly how much ice cream she had to eat to retain her original plumpitude.

     2013, Lucy Ellmann, “Daylight Saving Time”, in Mimi: A Novel, Bloomsbury, page 133

2. (countable) Something that is plump.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • At the close of the second act, the Viennese Dancers tripped upon the stage—These, as you know, are twenty or thirty children, apparently from five years old to to ten, who dress and dance like full-grown dancing girls and produce astonishing effects by their well drilled combinations—They are curiosities, if it were only for the robust developement of their little bodies. Seen through a magnifying glass, their short petticoats, etc., would hardly look decent; but as children, the plumpitudes which they expose by every movement are humorously beautiful.

     1845 July 3, N[athaniel] P[arker] Willis, “From the New York Mirror. Willis’s Letters from London. […]”, in Rutland Herald, volume 51, number 33, Rutland, Vt., published 14 August 1845, front page, column 2

   • Excuse, therefore, the shortcomings of genius under the sudorific influence of the summer solstice; for be assured that the vertical sun, however it may dulcify and mature cherries, plums, and other fruitful ‘plumpitudes,’ is by no means favorable to the development of intellectual products.

     1853, Whirligig, quotee, edited by William Kidd, Kidd’s Own Journal; for Inter-Communications on Natural History, Popular Science, and Things in General, volume IV, number 8, London: William Spooner, […]; Richard Groombridge and Sons, […], page 124, column 2

   • This is why at this point I bend my knees in deep contrition and cast my tearful gaze at two wonderful Stefans who reign over today’s Poland: Kisielewski, ruler of the simple tribe of columnists, and Bratkowski, dictator of Polish journalism. I gaze at them with affection and groan with inward pangs for having dared to poke their respectable plumpitudes in one of my pamphlets. Woe is me, woe . .

     1991, Tadeusz Konwicki, translated by Walter [Werner] Arndt, New World Avenue and Vicinity, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 28