Beamy

From the Body Condition Score Chart for Cats
issued  by the Global Nutrition Committee of
the World Small Animals Veterinary Association (WSAVA)

From the mouth of a friend of mine, mimicking a relative of hers describing a cat both of them had known:

“She’s getting a bit beamy.”

Beamy! It sounds as good as it looks. How delightful is this word I had not known before yesterday, Saturday, July 22nd, 2023. This word is already a 2023 quarter-finalist. 

“Starry?” I asked my friend, knowing this did not make sense in context.

No, she replied, it’s a nautical term, relating to the beam of a ship at its widest point. Beamy is a slangier way to say “broad in the beam,” an expression I have heard before. 

For those who are interested, the International Institute of Marine Surveying (IIMS) provides a link to an undated glossary of shipbuilding terms that defines beam (“The maximum breadth of the vessel . . . ”) in detail. The 1918 edition of the glossary, according to its author, attempts “to explain the more common words and phrases used in building a steel ship at the present time,” e.g.

From the 1918 edition of Modern Shipbuilding Terms
Defined and Illustrated, by F. Forrest Pease,
Staff Instructor, Education and Training Section,
United States Shipping Board, Emergency Fleet Corporation
(Philadelphia and London, J. B. Lippincott Company)

If the cat was getting beamy, it was putting on weight around her (the cat’s) midsection.

A member of the World Small Animal Veterinary Association (formerly the International Association of Small Animal Specialists (IASAS))* would likely have deemed the cat overweight (see the chart at the top of this post).

A man who is co-chair of the WSAVA Therapeutic Guidelines Group, a member of the WSAVA Global Pain Council, and an advisor to the WSAVA Global Dental Committee reportedly developed the Feline Grimace Scale website.