He sat with his hands folded over his paunch. He used to be very thin but now he has a slight paunch.
Recent Examples on the WebThe carefree, six-pack wild child of the late 1980s is now a reflective and sober man with a middle-aged paunch and gait. Rodney Ho, ajc, 26 May 2022 Not enough time to fall in love with gluten, grow a slight paunch, tame his golf swing, or find a wooden bench outside a tackle shop where everyone gossips and drinks sludge coffee. Jason Gay, WSJ, 14 Mar. 2022 The bartender was a big, nasty-looking old guy with an enormous paunch, a flat-top haircut four inches high, and an unlit cigar turned backwards in his mouth. Jamie Kitman, Car and Driver, 16 Feb. 2022 Beavis, on the other hand, has just a slight paunch and a few wrinkles to go with his reading glasses. Gil Kaufman, Billboard, 5 Jan. 2022 The leader of all this non-action is the middle-aged Agent Garrick, a shambolic, avuncular presence with a paunch and a nervous cough. Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker, 18 Oct. 2021 The portly patriarch of paunch persevered to pulverize the Baron of Beardonkadonk in the final match of #FatBearWeek 2021. Naledi Ushe, PEOPLE.com, 7 Oct. 2021 Raymond taught the Phanatic what became his signature moves: how to whomp his paunch, how to suction a plunger to the head of a bald man, how to stand at a distance and land rings on the plunger.New York Times, 6 Aug. 2021 Gone was the Bear, and in his place was a lean man, skinny even, though with a paunch that came with the years, nearly 73 at the time. John Penner, Los Angeles Times, 29 June 2021 See More
Word History
Etymology
Middle English, from Anglo-French *panche, pance, from Latin pantic-, pantex