PINGUESCENCE/pɪŋˈɡwɛsns/

The process of becoming fat; fatness, obesity.

My lesson this week is taken from a book of 1847, Lectures on the Principles and Practice of Physic by Thomas Watson: “Shut a healthy pig up in a small sty, and give him as much food as he is willing to eat, and you ensure his rapid pinguescence.” How true, even today.

The chance of pinguescence turning up in any book you’re reading is small. The Oxford English Dictionary comments that it is “literary or humorous in later use”, though the archives suggest that any such later use is rare. And yet, with the panic about the obesity epidemic currently sweeping the developed nations, it might be a good time to bring it back into circulation.

The word is from Latin pinguis, fat, which — directly or through its relatives in Latin — has given English a number of words, such as pinguedinise, to make fat, pinguedinous, fatty or greasy, pinguefy, to make greasy or saturate with oil, and pinguefying, fattening or greasy. All are rare.

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