Fat
Fat turns up in 2 fields: asphalt, printing. Here is what it means to the people in each one.
Fat in asphalt
Describes mix carrying too much binder: shiny, slick and prone to bleeding or rutting.
Crew and plant word for a mix with excess binder or too few voids. Fat mix looks glossy and wet in the truck, slumps flat instead of mounding, may leave binder puddled on the truck bed, and shoves or flushes under the rollers. Calling a load fat is usually the first warning, ahead of any lab number, that the plant's binder feed or a cold feed gradation has drifted.
"This load's fat, look at it shine, tell the dump man to check the next ticket and call the plant."
Fat in printing
An older term for typesetting work that is quick and easy to compose, yielding better piece-rate pay.
A historic piece-rate typesetting term describing copy that is fast and easy to set, allowing a compositor to earn more money for less effort. It usually referred to pages with wide margins, large blank spaces, extensive leading, or inserted illustrations that required fewer individual characters to fill the galley.
"Hand me that poetry manuscript, I need some fat copy after spending all morning on those dense legal tables."