When saying that someone is fat or overweight, I always feel that I have to use a diminutive or a euphemism, so as not to be disrespectful. In fact, I would rather not mention it at all, but sometimes you just can’t avoid the issue. In Spanish I normally use the diminutive ‘gordito/gordita’ which sounds a bit like the French ‘grassouillet’ and almost like a pet name. In English I wouldn’t use the adjective on its own, but rather say something like ‘a little bit overweight’. Terms like ‘portly/stocky frame’ or ‘stout’ are also politically correct, I think.
Which terms do you mostly use?
Some thesaurus definitions:
beefy, big, blimp, brawny, broad, bulging, bulky, bull, burly, butterball, chunky, corpulent, cow, distended, dumpy, elephantine, fleshy, gargantuan, gross, heavy, heavyset, hefty, husky, inflated, jelly-belly, lard, large, meaty, obese, overblown, oversize, paunchy, plump, plumpish, ponderous, porcine, portly, potbellied, pudgy, roly-poly, rotund, solid, stocky, stout, stubby, swollen, thickset, tubby, weighty, whale
blubber, bulk, cellulite, corpulence, excess, fatness, flab, flesh, grease, lard, obesity, overabundance, overflow, paunch, plethora, suet, superfluity, surfeit, surplus, tallow
fatty, chubby, blubbery, cholesterol-filled, fat, fatlike, greasy, lardaceous, lardy, oily, oleaginous, rich, suety, unctuous