noun, verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   Soft filling material used in cushions etc. countable, uncountable
2. 2
   artifact consisting of soft or resilient material used to fill or give shape or protect or add comfort wordnet
3. 3
   Extra characters such as spaces added to a record to fill it out to a fixed length. countable, uncountable
4. 4
   Extraneous text added to a message for the purpose of concealing its beginning, ending, or length. countable, uncountable
5. 5
   Anything of little value used to fill up space. countable, uncountable

   "That magazine is mostly advertisements; the rest is padding."

Show 3 more definitions

6. 6
   The process of mordanting a fabric. countable, uncountable
7. 7
   A diaper. countable, uncountable
8. 8
   Robbing on a highway. countable, obsolete, uncountable

Verb

1. 1
   present participle and gerund of pad form-of, gerund, participle, present

Synonyms

All synonyms

aegisall foursarm guardbackstopbattologybedizenment

Example

More examples

"Tom was caught padding his expense account."

Etymology

From pad + -ing.

Related phrases

laughter paddingpadding-kenstat padding

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.