Showing results for "stuffing"

• present participle of stuff.

stuffing

American  

[stuhf-ing] / ˈstʌf ɪŋ /

noun

1. the act of a person or thing that stuffs.

2. a material or substance used to stuff something.

3. Cooking. seasoned breadcrumbs or other filling used to stuff a chicken, turkey, etc., before cooking.

4. Informal. internal parts; insides.

   to beat the stuffing out of an opponent.

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stuffing British  

/ ˈstʌfɪŋ /

noun

1. the material with which something is stuffed

2. a mixture of chopped and seasoned ingredients with which poultry, meat, etc, is stuffed before cooking

3. to upset or dishearten someone completely

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Other Word Forms

• understuffing
  noun

Etymology

Origin of stuffing

First recorded in 1520–30; stuff + -ing ¹

Explanation

Stuffing is the soft material inside pillows, mattresses, or sofa cushions. Without stuffing, your comfy chair wouldn't be very comfy. Stuffing is meant either to make things more comfortable, or more delicious. The edible kind of stuffing is a savory filling that's stuffed inside something being cooked, like a turkey or a potato. Stuffing stems from the verb stuff, which meant "fill the belly with food and drink" in the early 1400s, and came to mean "fill the interior of a pastry or the cavity of a fowl or beast" later in the century.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

stuffing

It was improvised, deeply untraditional and exactly the kind of stuffing I wanted to eat again.

From Salon ● Sep. 6, 2026

Users were targeted by a so-called "credential stuffing" attack in which hackers used passwords exposed in previous breaches to access 23andMe accounts for which people had used similar credentials.

From BBC ● May 28, 2026

On the another hand, LeBron James is getting the stuffing beat out of him and no calls.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 9, 2026

Why is everyone suddenly stuffing their screens with dizzying amounts of data?

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 3, 2026

It was like he’d crumpled the bills up into a ball before stuffing them into his pocket.

From "From the Desk of Zoe Washington" by Janae Marks

Related Words

• dressing
• filling