buffered

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of buffer.

   The app buffered the incoming data before sending it to the screen.

   A thick belt of trees buffered the houses from the highway noise.

   Note

   A regular form with one spelling for past and participle, and the r is not doubled: buffered, not bufferred. The data meaning of buffer works with or without an object. The app buffered the stream, or the stream simply buffered. The chemistry meaning takes the solution as its object. As a participle it slides easily into the adjective "using a buffer", as in a buffered stream.

2. 2
   adjective

   Employing a buffer to temporarily hold data or to absorb and ease an impact before passing it along.

   Like a waiting room that holds people until the next stage is ready for them.

   Switching to a buffered output let the program write to disk in larger, smoother batches.

   The buffered loading dock kept incoming trucks from overwhelming the warehouse crew.

3. 3
   adjective

   Held dissolved within a buffer solution: a mixture formulated to keep its acidity nearly constant.

   Like a thermostat for acidity, nudging the mixture back whenever it starts to drift.

   The protein stayed folded because it was kept in a buffered medium at neutral pH.

   Researchers compared the reaction in plain water against the same reagents in a buffered system.

   Note

   Chemistry's version of the cushion: the buffer is a weak acid paired with its conjugate base, or a weak base with its conjugate acid. Together they absorb small additions of acid or base so that the pH barely moves. The word sits comfortably beside a pH value, as in a medium buffered at neutral pH. Unlike the data-and-impact sense, what gets absorbed here is chemical change rather than force or flow.

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