The Rice University Neologisms Database

Fat, overweight As the article mentioned, the word healthy is being used in place of fat due to the current view of political correctness our society has. The word’s context was actually in a British expatriate newspaper, which suggests that the usage originated in the British isles (probably southern England) and is now possibly spreading throughout the western world. I suppose the word came to be associated as it did because in the past, the chubby, fat babies were always the ones who ended up surviving and being healthy. As such, being fat almost equated to being healthy, and perhaps the association has been loosely held up until the present time. However, with so much research going into obesity and its health problems, we know that being fat is not necessarily being healthy. However, the term healthy, when it is referring to fat people, is not applied to adults, or even adolescents. Apparently it is just being applied to children and babies, where the health risks of being overweight are not as major as if the child were older. It is clear that the word is trying to take the place of fat, and remove the negative connotations, but I do not think that it will really catch on, as the original meaning is just too prevalent to let this secondary (and contradictory) meaning take precedence.