The present invention provides an absorbent article adapted to prevent body waste from leaking beyond leakage-barrier cuffs and thereby to restrict leakage of body waste from the article. A chassis 14 forming a diaper 10 includes a top-sheet 40 lying on a side facing the wearers skin and a back-sheet 50 lying on the opposite side wherein the top-sheet 40 has a plurality of ridges extending in a longitudinal direction Y and a plurality of grooves each defined between a pair of the adjacent ridges. Opposite side edges 23 of a liquid-absorbent structure 20 respectively include middle segments extending in a crotch region 13 and front and rear segments respectively extending in front and rear waist regions 11, 12 having width dimensions in a transverse direction X larger than a width dimension in the transverse direction of the middle segments. Outboard of the middle segments, imaginary lines 90 respectively connecting the front segments to the rear segments cooperate with the side edges 23 of the liquid-absorbent structure to define absorbent structure-absent zones 91. Leakage-barrier cuffs 30 are attached to the side of the top-sheet 40 so that the absorbent structure-absent zones 91 may extend between proximal side edges 34 of the cuffs and the side edges 23 of the liquid-absorbent structure.
