doughy

Think of freshly made bread dough: soft, heavy, and not yet firm. That is the basic idea of doughy. It can describe food that feels soft and a little undercooked inside, or a person who looks soft and out of shape. Calling bread or cake "doughy" often means it needed more baking. Calling a person "doughy" is usually mildly insulting and suggests a soft body with little muscle tone. The word can also describe a face or complexion that looks pale, soft, and slightly swollen.

The word doughy originally described something that literally resembled bread dough: soft, heavy, yielding, and lacking a firm structure. Today, it is still very common in the kitchen. It is most often used for baked goods that are still a little undercooked in the center. If you bite into bread, cake, or a pastry and the inside feels too soft and raw instead of properly baked, it can be described as doughy.

Beyond the bakery, doughy is often used to describe physical appearance, usually in a critical way. It refers to a body that lacks muscle definition and looks soft and flabby. "After a long winter of sitting on the couch, he felt his midsection becoming rather doughy." More specifically, it can describe a certain kind of face or complexion. A "doughy face" or "doughy complexion" suggests skin that is pale, soft, and lacking healthy color or clear definition.

The key to using doughy correctly is its link to softness without firmness. Whether you are talking about an underbaked cake, a soft body, or a pale face, the word suggests something thick, soft, and not fully firm or healthy-looking. It can be neutral or mildly negative for food, depending on context, but it usually sounds negative when it is used for people.