puffery
Americannoun
-
undue or exaggerated praise.
-
publicity, acclaim, etc., that is full of undue or exaggerated praise.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of puffery
First recorded in 1730–35; puff (in the sense “to praise with exaggeration”) + -ery
Explanation
When you overdo the praise in order to flatter someone, that's puffery. It's probably puffery if your sister tells you you're the most attractive, smartest, kindest person she knows — right before asking you to loan her 50 dollars. If you exaggerate compliments in order to get something in return, you've engaged in puffery. In addition to this common usage, puffery is also an actual legal term meaning "an exaggeration or statement that no reasonable person would take as factual." So if a furniture company claims in a TV ad that one night's sleep on their mattresses will raise your IQ by 20 points, you can be pretty sure it's puffery.
Vocabulary lists containing puffery
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Is our celebration of a measly 250 years of continuous operation another example of American puffery?
From Slate ● Jul. 4, 2026
Ms. Coppola’s approach doesn’t even rise to the level of the journalism in Vogue, which itself gets lots of puffery.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 19, 2026
Customers are expected to be smart enough to recognise that ads will often contain a certain amount of "puffery".
From BBC ● Sep. 2, 2023
Of course, this kind of puffery was pumped by real estate interests, railroads, newspapers, movie studios and politicians.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 18, 2023
It has then exhausted all the dodges of puffery in pumping up an unusual degree of excitement.
From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 by Chambers, Robert
Yet it had evidently failed to impress the public of this town, their experiences probably having rendered them sceptical of such pufferies, for the house was miserably bad.
From The Library Magazine of Select Foreign Literature All volumes by Various
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
