Upholster

noun, verb

noun, verb ·3 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An upholder, a dealer in secondhand furniture and clothes; an upholsterer; a tradesman who finishes furniture. archaic
Verb
  1. 1
    To fit padding, stuffing, springs, webbing and fabric covering to (furniture). transitive
  2. 2
    provide furniture with padding, springs, webbing, and covers wordnet

Etymology

Etymology 1

Back-formation from upholsterer (“tradesman who finishes furniture”), from Middle English upholdester, variant of Middle English upholder (“dealer in small goods”), from upholden (“to repair, uphold”); equivalent to uphold + -ster. Sense development as well as form may have been influenced by conflation with unrelated bolster.

Etymology 2

From Middle English upholdester, upholster; equivalent to uphold + -ster.

Related phrases

re-upholsterwell-upholstered

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