chested

English

Etymology

From chest +‎ -ed.

Pronunciation

(UK) IPA^(key): /ˈtʃɛst.ɪd/
(US) IPA^(key): /ˈt͡ʃɛstɪd/, /ˈt͡ʃɛstəd/
(General Australian) IPA^(key): /ˈtʃestəd/

Verb

chested

simple past and past participle of chest

Adjective

chested

(usually in combination) Having a chest (with a specified quality).
Jenny was the most flat-chested of her friends.
- 1843, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Last of the Barons‎^[1], volume II, Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, pages 126–7:
  Spare, like Henry the Fifth, almost to the manly defect of leanness, his proportions were slight to those which gave such portly majesty to the vast-chested Edward, but they evinced the promise of almost equal strength […]
- c. 1874, William Cullen Bryant, The Iliad of Homer, Translated into English Blank Verse‎^[2], Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Book III, p. 76:
  Beholding Ajax then, the aged king / Asked yet again: "Who is that other chief / Of the Achaians, tall, and large of limb,— / Taller and broader-chested than the rest?"
- 1925, DuBose Heyward, Porgy‎^[3], London: Jonathan Cape, published 1928, Part VI, p. 185:
  Loud greetings followed, and another burst of laughter, heavy, deep-chested and glad.
- 1949, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four‎^[4], Part Three, Chapter 1:
  From behind him there emerged a broad-chested guard with a long black truncheon in his hand.
- 1970, Nadine Gordimer, A Guest of Honour, Penguin, published 1973, Part Two, p. 85:
  The schoolmaster himself was very thin, black and pigeon-chested under a woollen pullover.
- 2009, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, chapter 27, in I Do Not Come to You by Chance, Hyperion:
  There was a corner shop at the end of my street which stocked these movies that were released in hundreds every week. Each featured the same yellow-skinned, abundantly chested actresses and the same dreadlocked men, and each had a Part 1, a Part 2, and Part 3 - at least. Too bad that the JAMB exam did not test knowledge of Nollywood.
- 2015, Srđa Popović, Matthew Miller, chapter V, in Blueprint for Revolution, New York: Spiegel & Grau:
  The Russian state invests much time and effort in projecting a certain image of Putin to its citizens. We've all seen those ridiculous photographs of King Vladimir, the bare-chested tough hero who wrestles with animals, dives in submarines, and practices judo.

Usage notes

Some combinations, such as "flat-chested", form comparative and superlative forms like "flatter-chested" and "flattest-chested". Other combinations, such as "barrel chested", form comparative and superlative forms like "more barrel-chested" and "most barrel-chested".
Chested normally combines with an adjective or noun that modifies chest (as in ample-chested (“having an ample chest”)), but occasionally it stands alone as chested (“being in a chest”) or is modified by an adverb (as in amply chested, which is a rarer variant of ample-chested).

Derived terms