Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Padding put in cushions and upholstered furniture.
  • noun Food put into the cavity of a piece of meat or a vegetable that has been hollowed out.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The material used for filling a cushion, a mattress, a horse-collar, the skin of a bird or other animal, etc.
  • noun In cookery, seasoned or flavored material, such as bread-crumbs, chestnuts, mashed potatoes, or oysters, used for filling the body of a fowl, or the hollow from which a bone has been taken in a joint of meat, before cooking, to keep the whole in shape, and to impart flavor.
  • noun The art or operation of filling and mounting the skin of an animal; taxidermy.
  • noun A filling of indifferent or superfluous material for the sake of extension, as in a book; padding.
  • noun A mixture of fish-oil and tallow rubbed into leather to soften it and render it supple and water-proof.
  • noun The wooden wedges or folds of paper used to wedge the plates of a comb-cutter's saw into the two grooves in the stock
  • noun In textile-coloring, the process of applying a mordant dyestuff to textile material that has not been previously mordanted. The color lake is subsequently formed, and fixed by an after-treatment or saddening with some mordanted principle.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun That which is used for filling anything.
  • noun (Cookery) Any seasoning preparation used to stuff meat; especially, a composition of bread, condiments, spices, etc.; forcemeat; dressing.
  • noun A mixture of oil and tallow used in softening and dressing leather.
  • noun a device for rendering a joint impervious where there is a hole through which a movable cylindrical body, as the paston rod of a steam engine, or the plunger of a pump, slides back and forth, or in which a shaft turns. It usually consists of a box or chamber, made by an enlargement of part of the hole, forming a space around the rod or shaft for containing packing which is compressed and made to fill the space closely by means of a sleeve, called the gland, which fits loosely around the rod, and is pressed upon the packing by bolts or other means.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Present participle of stuff.
  • noun The matter used to stuff flexible hollow objects such as pillows and saddles.
  • noun Any of many food items used to stuff another.
  • noun A mixture of oil and tallow used in softening and dressing leather.
  • noun Internet The insertion of many copies of a word into a web page in an attempt to increase its search engine ranking.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a mixture of seasoned ingredients used to stuff meats and vegetables
  • noun padding put in mattresses and cushions and upholstered furniture

Etymologies

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Examples

Comments

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  • "In textile-coloring, the process of applying a mordant dyestuff to textile material that has not been previously mordanted. The color lake is subsequently formed, and fixed by an after-treatment or saddening with some mordanted principle."

    --CD&C

    January 10, 2013

  • I was having a lovely Friday morning, all hopping whirlybird and cream biscuitsong, until ruzuzu came along saddening with some mordanted principle.

    January 10, 2013

  • It gets worse--read the part about hard and soft stuffing.

    January 11, 2013

  • forcemeat is a barfworthy word too.

    January 11, 2013

  • Thanks, bilby. I'd forgotten the connection between stuffing, forcemeat, and farce. I'm really hoping I forget it again before the next series of holiday gatherings where I'll be tempted say something interesting that will end up sounding rude.

    January 11, 2013