English

Alternative forms

• well covered

Adjective

well-covered ‎(not comparable)

1. (chiefly Britain, of a person, euphemistic) Fat, corpulent, full-figured.
   • 1859, George Eliot, Adam Bede, ch. 26:

     That simple dancing of well-covered matrons, laying aside for an hour the cares of house and dairy, remembering but not affecting youth, not jealous but proud of the young maidens by their side . . . it would be a pleasant variety to see all that sometimes.

   • 1921, John Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga, part 2, ch. 11:

     "She wasn't much of a skeleton as I remember her," murmured Euphemia, "extremely well-covered."

   • 2003, Thomas Stuttaford, "Eat less and walk more to keep diabetes at bay," Times Online (UK), 20 Mar. (retrieved 24 June 2008):

     The sculptor Botero—influenced perhaps by Maillol’s love of well covered women—created in 1981 an overweight, stumpy couple.

2. Amply equipped or provisioned, especially with respect to a place where food is served.
   • 1865, Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters, ch. 33:

     He kept shaking Mr Gibson's hand all the time till he had placed him, nothing loth, at the well-covered dining-table.

   • 1866, Anthony Trollope, The Belton Estate, ch. 31:

     How are you to bid a starving man to wait when you put him down at a well-covered board?