spare tire

noun
1.
a tire used or kept available as an emergency replacement on a vehicle.
2.
Informal. excess fat around the waistline.

Origin:
1920–25

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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Slang Dictionary

spare tire definition


  1. n.
    a thickness in the waist; a roll of fat around one's waist. : The spare tire started when I was twenty-six.
  2. n.
    an unneeded person; an unproductive person. : Gary is a spare tire. Send him home.
Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
Cite This Source
00:10
Spare tire is always a great word to know.
So is slumgullion. Does it mean:
a stew of meat, vegetables, potatoes, etc.
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
American Heritage
Idioms & Phrases

spare tire

Fat around one's middle, as in He's determined to lose ten pounds and that spare tire he's acquired. This expression transfers the term for an extra tire carried in cars in case of a flat tire to excess fat around the waist. [Colloquial; mid-1900s]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
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Example sentences
Know where items such as your spare tire, jack, and other tools are in the
  vehicle and how to use them.
Make sure you have adequate fuel and a good spare tire.
There's something vulnerable about an eighteen-wheeler-sized spare tire that
  everyone thinks they can handle.
Liposuction is the only way to actually reduce the number of fat cells in your
  spare tire.
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