讓身體長肉
這一支是字面上的用法：餵食，然後身體變重。核心畫面在這裡不用轉彎。
verb · B1
To feed a farm animal a lot so that it grows heavy enough to be sold as meat, or, of the animal, to grow heavy in this way.
育肥（養到可出售）
核心畫面
You can think of fatten as adding and adding until something grows thick. The first picture is food and a body: more meals go in, and the animal or the person gets heavier. That picture is easy to lend out. A wallet with more notes in it grows thick in the same way, and so does a folder with more paper in it, and a river after rain. So fatten is often not about fat at all. It is about watching something swell as more of it arrives.
「fatten」可以想成「一直加東西進去，讓它變厚、變重」。最直接的畫面是餵食：吃得多，身體就長肉。這個畫面很容易借…更多收起
「fatten」可以想成「一直加東西進去，讓它變厚、變重」。最直接的畫面是餵食：吃得多，身體就長肉。這個畫面很容易借出去。錢包裡的錢多了，錢包也會變厚。資料夾夾了更多紙，一樣越來越厚。下過雨的河，也是把河道撐寬。所以 fatten 講的常常不是脂肪。它講的是「東西一直加進來，看著它一點一點鼓起來」。From the word’s history
The word is fat plus -en, the same ending as in widen and darken: make it so, or become so. The modern uses are all versions of make it thick.
這個字是 fat（胖的）加上 -en 造出來的，跟 widen、darken 是同一組尾巴，意思是「使變成…」或「變成…」。今天的每個用法都還是同一件事：讓它變厚。
packet evidence: Wiktionary etymology_text for fatten, 'From fat + -en.' (source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:1180918210:38173)
Two branches
讓數量或厚度長大
這一支把「長肉」的畫面借給沒有身體的東西：錢、數字、紙、光、河水。變厚的動作一樣，只是長肉的不是肉。
verb · B2
To make an amount bigger: a profit, a wallet, a total, a budget.
使（金額）變多
原始詞典資料6 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
fattenverb/ˈfætən/
- 1
To cause (a person or animal) to be fat or fatter.
- We must fatten the turkey in time for Thanksgiving.
- And if the mat[t]er be too little, the vertue of digestion fayleth, and the bodye is dryed, and if the matter and meate be moderate, the meats is well digested, and the bodye fattened, the heart comforted, kinde heate made more, the humors made temperate, & wit made cleere:
- 2
To become fat or fatter.
- He gradually fattened in the five years after getting married.
- The Laplanders, possessing a country where corn will not grow, make bread of the inner bark of trees; and Linneus reports, that swine there fatten on that food […]
- 3
To make thick or thicker (often something containing paper, especially money).
- “You horrible old man, you’ve always tried to turn Erik into a slave, to fatten your pocketbook! […]”
- […] stirred by the air / That freshened from the window, these ascended / In fattening the prolonged candle-flames, / Flung their smoke into the laquearia, / Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
- 4
To become thick or thicker.
- A broad river of white paper rushed constantly up from the cylinder and leaped into a mangling chaos of machinery whence it emerged a second later, cut, printed, folded and stacked, sliding along a board with a hundred others in a fattening sheaf.
- The pencil-line of light by his feet fattened to a bar. Alan looked around and saw Norris Ridgewick.
- 5
To make (soil) fertile and fruitful.
- to fatten land
- 1612, Joseph Hall, Contemplations vpon the Principall Passages of the Holie Storie, London: Sa. Macham, Volume 1, Book 4, p. 333, As the riuer of Nilus was to Egypt in steed of heauen to moisten and fatten the earth; so their confidence was more in it then in heauen;
- 6
To become fertile and fruitful.
- These hostile Fields shall fatten with thy Blood.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。