# padding

Pronunciation: say "PAD-ing" /ˈpædɪŋ/

## Noun

1. Soft filling material placed inside cushions, furniture, or clothing to add comfort or shape.
   - Simple: Soft material used to fill cushions, jackets, and other things to make them comfortable.
   - _Upholsterers replaced the worn padding beneath the leather seat._
   - _The winter jacket's padding kept him warm on the mountain trail._
2. Material of little value added simply to fill up space, especially extra words in writing or speech.
   - Simple: Extra words or things added just to fill space, with no real value.
   - _The report's padding made it twice as long as it needed to be._
   - _Critics complained the speech was mostly padding with little real substance._
3. In computing, filler characters such as spaces that bring a record up to a required fixed length.
   - Simple: Extra characters, like spaces, added to data to make it a set length.
   - _The encoder inserts padding to bring each block up to the required width._
   - _Removing the padding restored the record to its original data._
5. Extraneous text added to a message to conceal its beginning, ending, or length.
   - Simple: Extra text added to a message to hide where it starts, where it ends, or how long it is.
   - _The cipher clerk inserted padding to mask where the real message began._
   - _Random padding kept eavesdroppers from measuring the transmission's true length._
6. A diaper; the absorbent garment worn by an infant to catch waste.
   - Simple: A diaper, or the soft cloth pad a baby wears to stay dry.
   - _Grandmother pinned the cloth padding snugly around the infant._
   - _The toddler's padding needed changing right after the afternoon nap._
7. The process of treating a fabric with a mordant so that it will take and hold dye.
   - Simple: The step of treating cloth with a chemical so that dye will hold and not wash out.
   - _Careful padding ensured the silk would take the dye evenly across the bolt._
   - _The dyehouse completed the padding before the fabric ever reached the color vats._

## Verb

4. Present participle of pad. — present participle and gerund of pad
   - Simple: Present participle of pad. Use this form for the action happening right now.
   - _The workers are padding the crates before shipping them overseas._
   - _Investigators discovered he was padding his expense reports for months._

## Noun

8. The act of robbing travelers on a public highway. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: The crime of robbing travelers out on a road.
   - _Padding on the moorland roads made night travel dangerous for merchants._
   - _The magistrate sentenced the pair for padding along the king's highway._

## Origin

**Meaning 4** — Formed from pad plus the suffix -ing.
**Meanings 1–3, 5–8** — Formed from pad plus the suffix -ing.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/padding (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).