muscular
muscularly
If you're strong and athletic, with powerfully developed muscles, you can describe yourself as muscular.
Weight lifters are muscular, and so is the Incredible Hulk. If your grandmother has worked as a cattle farmer her entire life, she is probably pretty muscular too. Anyone with strong muscles can be described as muscular. In the 1600's, the word simply meant "pertaining to muscles," but by the mid-1700's, muscular specifically referred to well-developed muscles. The root word is the Latin musculus, which, oddly enough, means both "muscle" and "little mouse."
Definitions of muscular
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having a robust muscular body-build characterized by predominance of structures (bone and muscle and connective tissue) developed from the embryonic mesodermal layer
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synonyms:
mesomorphic
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athletic
having a sturdy and well proportioned body
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Antonyms:
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ectomorphic
having a build with little fat or muscle but with long limbs
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endomorphic, pyknic
having a squat and fleshy build
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asthenic
having a slender physique
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fat
having an (over)abundance of flesh
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lean, thin
lacking excess flesh
- show more antonyms...
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athletic
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(of a person) possessing physical strength and weight; rugged and powerful
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of or relating to or consisting of muscle“muscular contraction”
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having or suggesting great physical power or force
DISCLAIMER: These example sentences appear in various news sources and books to reflect the usage of the word ‘muscular'.
Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Vocabulary.com or its editors.
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