Word.ws English Dictionary

padding out

padding out is the present participle and gerund of pad out.

Meaning of pad out

Verb

pad out (third-person singular simple present pads out, present participle padding out, simple past and past participle padded out)

  1. (idiomatic) To add something extra to something to make it appear more substantial.
    • Some students pad out their essays by adding a whole lot of quotes from random sources.
  2. (idiomatic, slang) To sleep or go to bed.
    • Because of my job I usually pad out just before nine o'clock.

Questions about padding out

What is padding out the present participle and gerund of?
Padding out is the present participle and gerund of pad out.

Words near padding out in the dictionary

  1. padders
  2. paddie
  3. paddies
  4. padding
  5. padding down
  6. padding out
  7. padding the hoof
  8. padding up
  9. padding-ken
  10. padding-kens
  11. paddings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: padding out (page history and authors); pad out (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “padding out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/padding_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.