English

Verb

chested

1. simple past tense and past participle of chest

Adjective

chested

1. (usually in combination) Having a chest (with a specified quality).
   • 1843, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Last of the Barons, Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, Vol. II, pp. 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, 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, London: Jonathan Cape, 1928, Part VI, p. 185,

     Loud greetings followed, and another burst of laughter, heavy, deep-chested and glad.

   • 1949, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 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, 1973, Part Two, p. 85,

     The schoolmaster himself was very thin, black and pigeon-chested under a woollen pullover.

   • 2009, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, I Do Not Come to You by Chance, Hyperion, Chapter 27,

     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 and Matthew Miller, Blueprint for Revolution, New York: Spiegel & Grau, Chapter V,

     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.

   Jenny was the most flat-chested of her friends.

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

• barrel-chested
• flat-chested