adjective
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short of breath
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swollen or bloated
a puffy face
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pompous or conceited
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blowing in gusts
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of puffy
Explanation
Puffy things are swollen or soft, like a big, puffy hairdo or your favorite puffy winter coat that's stuffed full of feathers. Your eyes might be puffy after a really sad movie, and your cat may look puffy when she's hissing at the dog. Big, round clouds are puffy, and so are the white seed heads of dandelions — the puffy balls you can blow on and make a wish. Wind is puffy too, when it blows in little gusts. This is the earliest meaning of puffy, from puff and its Old English root pyffan, "to blow with the mouth."
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:
Sunday was the test that all championship teams must pass, and the Rams did so with frozen hands and puffy faces and a will that wailed.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 19, 2026
While the former was delicate and thin, the latter was a thick, puffy flatbread baked in a tandoor.
From BBC ● Dec. 29, 2025
For something completely different, I decided to try her New York Dutch Baby, which is a kind of giant, puffy pancake akin to Yorkshire pudding.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 21, 2025
"Supermassive dark stars are extremely bright, giant, yet puffy clouds made primarily out of hydrogen and helium, which are supported against gravitational collapse by the minute amounts of self-annihilating dark matter inside them," Ilie said.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 14, 2025
The sheriff doesn’t look much like Sandy—he looks more like Mikey, with a sunburn spreading across his nose, puffy cheeks, and those small, pale, watery eyes.
From "King and the Dragonflies" by Kacen Callender
During this hormonal shift, your body holds on to more fluids, meaning you may end up with a puffier face, general bloating and tender, swollen breasts.
From BBC ● Aug. 3, 2026
The overriding fashion aesthetic is puffer jackets, the puffier the better, accessorized with a scarf and a scowl.
From New York Times ● Feb. 24, 2023
I could tell by her crumpled, gray face and even puffier eyes that Mom was spent and heartbroken.
From Salon ● Feb. 20, 2022
The churros on the dessert menu also surprised me: They’re puffier than I expected and dusted with powdered sugar, like beignets, which they kind of resemble.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 25, 2018
The rashes on his face seemed to have become bigger and flatter, less defined, so that they made his face look even puffier.
From "Purple Hibiscus" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
WASP-17b is one of the "puffiest" planets known — and its bloated atmosphere makes it a great target for the James Webb Space Telescope.
From Scientific American ● Oct. 20, 2023
Huffiest & puffiest was still the wind of Fu Szu-nien.
From Time Magazine Archive
His hair is perfectly slicked back and he is sporting the puffiest mustache I have ever seen.
From "Marcus Vega Doesn't Speak Spanish" by Pablo Cartaya
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.
