padding

American  

[pad-ing] / ˈpæd ɪŋ /

noun

• paddings
  plural

1. material, as cotton or straw, used to pad something.

2. something added unnecessarily or dishonestly, as verbiage to a speech or a false charge on an expense account.

3. the act of a person or thing that pads.

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padding British  

/ ˈpædɪŋ /

noun

1. any soft material used to pad clothes, furniture, etc

2. superfluous material put into a speech or written work to pad it out; waffle

3. inflated or false entries in a financial account, esp an expense account

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• paddings
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of padding

First recorded in 1820–30; pad ¹ + -ing ¹

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Explanation

A cushioning or protective material is padding. When you're moving into a new apartment, you might want to wrap your dishes in padding to keep them from being damaged. Padding has many different uses, from the padding in a padded mailing envelope to the padding in a sofa cushion that gives you a soft place to sit. There's also padding inside protective sports gear and built into yoga mats. Sometimes padding is simply used to make something seem bigger, and from this meaning comes the sense of padding meaning "unnecessary extra material," especially superfluous words in a speech or a book.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

padding paddings

Arguably the damage might be less without all the padding, precisely because then your pain thresholds, and your bone fragility, limit how hard you can reasonably hit other players.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 30, 2026

After the coroner warned the FA about the risk of future deaths, padding was added to Stoke Gifford United's clubhouse and the run-off between it and the pitch was increased.

From BBC ● Sep. 25, 2026

And when one of us finally came padding down the wooden stairs, sleepy and rumpled and operating on a schedule she would never have personally endorsed, there was no reproach.

From Salon ● Aug. 31, 2026

“Do I need to hire more people? Is this going to slow down at all?” says Porter, who attributes the surge in part to stock-market gains padding boomers’ retirement savings.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 15, 2026

There was some excuse for this, since he had only a slit to peep through—and that was three inches away from his eye owing to the padding of straw—but be looked muddled as well.

From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White

The freshly dead were still encased in woolen paddings or blue uniforms.

From Time Magazine Archive

Observe the “antediluvian” shape of the bat—no paddings on the legs. 

From Pickwickian Manners and Customs by Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald

Then there was the sound of crashing and of paddings, and abruptly the noise was diminishing as if its source were moving farther away.

From The Fifth-Dimension Tube by Murray Leinster

There was something intolerable in their noiseless, ceaseless paddings over the pavement.

From The Lost Continent by Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

Certain types are specially treated, dyed black, tan or other colour, or left in their natural colour, stiffened and used for paddings and linings for cheap clothing, boots, shoes, bags and other articles.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 13, Slice 4 "Hero" to "Hindu Chronology" by Various

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