Word.ws English Dictionary

paperweight

paperweight noun: a small, decorative, somewhat weighty object placed on one or more pieces of paper to keep them from fluttering away.

paperweight: a small, decorative, somewhat weighty object placed on one or more pieces of paper to keep them...
Image: Hannes Grobe, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

paperweight (plural paperweights)

  1. A small, decorative, somewhat weighty object placed on one or more pieces of paper to keep them from fluttering away.
    • The ability of a segment of a glass sphere to magnify whatever is placed before it was known around the year 1000, when the spherical segment was called a reading stone, essentially what today we might term a frameless magnifying glass or plain glass paperweight.2013 September-October, Henry Petroski, “The Evolution of Eyeglasses”, in American Scientist
  2. Any object used for this purpose.
    • John used his coffee mug as a paperweight.
  3. (slang) A useless piece of equipment.
    • On Windows, the card has a working driver. On Linux right now, it's a paperweight.

paperweight meaning in Tamil, Kannada, Thai and Vietnamese

paperweight in Tamil

தாள் இருத்தி

paperweight in Kannada

ಹಾಳೆತೂಕ

paperweight in Thai

small, decorative, somewhat weighty object
ที่ทับกระดาษ

paperweight in Vietnamese

small, decorative, somewhat weighty object
bàn thẩm, chặn giấy

Forms of paperweight

pluralpaperweights
alternative form (archaic)paper-weight

Origin of paperweight

From paper + weight.

Questions about paperweight

What does paperweight mean?
Paperweight means a small, decorative, somewhat weighty object placed on one or more pieces of paper to keep them from fluttering away.
What is paperweight in Tamil?
Paperweight in Tamil is தாள் இருத்தி. See Paperweight meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is paperweight?
Paperweight is a noun.
What is the plural of paperweight?
The plural of paperweight is paperweights.

Words near paperweight in the dictionary

  1. papertrails
  2. Papertsian
  3. paperwall
  4. paperware
  5. paperwares
  6. paperweight
  7. paperweights
  8. paperwhite
  9. paperwhites
  10. paperwoman
  11. paperwomen

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: paperweight (page history and authors); paperweight (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); paperweight (Kannada Wiktionary) (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-paperweight.ogg.

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