a. [An onomatopœic modification of the earlier FLAPPY; the voiced ending in flab- as compared with flap- gives to the syllable a feebler effect suited to the meaning. Cf. Du. flabberen (of a breeze) to flutter; Sw. dial. fläbb the hanging underlip of an animal. With sense 2 cf. slabby.]
1. Hanging loose by its own weight, yielding to the touch and easily moved or shaken, flaccid, limp, soft; said chiefly of or with respect to flesh.
[1598. see FLAPPY.]
1697. Dryden, Virg. Georg., III. 778.
| The pininng Steer no Shades of lofty Woods, | |
| Nor flow’ry Meads can ease; nor crystal Floods | |
| Roll’d from the Rock: His flabby Flanks decrease; | |
| His Eyes are settled in a stupid Peace. |
1740. E. Baynard, Health (ed. 6), 10.
| This makes ’em tabid, lean and thin, | |
| With loose and flabby, wrinkled Skin. |
1752. H. Walpole, Corr. (1837), I. 163. The town is empty, nothing in it but flabby mackerel, and wooden gooseberry tarts, and a hazy east wind.
1766. Smollett, Trav., I. xviii. 291. In the summer, we have beef, veal, and mutton, chicken, and ducks; which last are very fat, and very flabby.
1813. J. Thomson, Lect. Inflam., 545. Her tongue had become yellow, swollen, and flabby.
1858. J. G. Holland, Titcomb’s Lett., vi. 58. Their [institutionalized children’s] eyes are red around the edges and very weak, their muscles are flabby, their skin is lifeless in color and in fact. Their minds are as dull as the minds of brutes, and their faces give the impression almost of idiotic stupidity.
1865. Dickens, Mut. Fr., III. iii. This flabby lump of mortality that we work so hard at with such patient perseverance, yields no sign of you.
2. Of language, character, etc.: Weak, wanting ‘back-bone’; nerveless, feeble.
1791. Boswell, Johnson (1831), IV. 356, note. Garrick, after listening to him for a while … turned slily to a friend, and whispered him, ‘What say you to this?—eh? Flabby, I think.’
1855. The Saturday Review, I. 10 Nov., 35/2. If the present rage for prostituting literature to the most casual purposes of temporary amusement continues, we shall expect that, as we have sliced up our novels into shilling numbers, and boiled down our Blackstones and Niebuhrs into flabby hebdomadal drivel, we shall in process of time have a comic prayer-book, and a Bible in monthly parts, with illustrations by Phiz. Ibid. (1861), XII. 14 Dec., 596/2. An international quarrel which touches us in our vital interests and our deepest feelings is to be settled by the flabby talk of people who are expressly told to keep their minds clear of all knowledge of the principles which it involves.
1864. Carlyle, Fredk. Gt., IV. XII. viii. 181. An indolent flabby kind of creature, she, unfit for an Autocrat.
1880. Standard, 22 Dec. Flabby logic like this.
3. Damp, clammy.
c. 1780. M. Monsey, Lett. to Mrs. Montague, in J. C. Jeaffreson, Bk. about Doctors, II. 87. How do you stand this flabby weather?
1849. Dickens, Dav. Copp. (C. D. ed.), 157. I think it was over the kitchen, because a warm greasy smell appeared to come up through the chinks in the floor, and there was a flabby perspiration on the walls.
Hence Flabbily adv., in a flabby manner.
1846. Worcester, Flabbily, in a flabby manner.
1856. G. Meredith, Shav. Shagpat, 325. Lo! when the lion saw that, the majesty melted from him, and in a moment the plumpness of content and prosperity forsook him, so that his tawny skin hung flabbily and his jaw drooped, and shame deprived him of stateliness; abashed was he!
