Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Puffing |
PuffingAdjective1. Breathing heavily. Noun1. Blowing tobacco smoke out into the air; "they smoked up the room with their ceaseless puffing". 2. An act of forcible exhalation. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "puffing" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1350. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Food & Agriculture | To roast on a hot plate. Source: European Union. (references) |
Slang in 1811 | PUFFING. Bidding at an auction, as above; also praising any thing above its merits, from interested motives. The art of puffing is at present greatly practised, and essentially necessary in all trades, professions, and callings. To puff and blow; to be ou. Source: 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
Synonyms: PuffingSynonyms: puffy (adj), huffing (n), snorting (n). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Expansion | Noun: expansion; increase; of size; enlargement, extension, augmentation; amplification, ampliation; aggrandizement, spread, increment, growth, development, pullulation, swell, dilation, rarefaction; turgescence, turgidness, turgidity; dispansion; obesity; (size); hydrocephalus, hydrophthalmus; dropsy, tumefaction, intumescence, swelling, tumor, diastole, distension; puffing, puffiness; inflation; pandiculation. |
Fatigue | Breathless, windless; short of breath, out of breath, short of wind; blown, puffing and blowing; short-breathed; anhelose; broken winded, short-winded; dyspnaeal, dyspnaeic. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Puffing |
| English words defined with "puffing": Efflation ♦ Hognosesnake ♦ puff, Puff adder, Puffery, Puffingly. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "puffing": Bomba ♦ Do-the-Boys' Hall. (references) |
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | The "Belle of Samar" puffing on a cheroot. Credit: Coast & Geodetic Survey Historical Image Collection. |  | Pipe puffing puppies puzzle proud possessor / p. Credit: Library of Congress; photo by Underwood & Underwood.. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
 |
| "Tom turkey" by Velda Christensen Commentary: "Now I know what it means when people talk about someone's feathers being ruffled. This guy just kept puffing up bigger and bigger every time I looked at him. Kinda freaky looking, isn't he?." |
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers. |
| "Puffing" is generally used as a lexical verb (-ing form) -- approximately 94.48% of the time. "Puffing" is used about 145 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Lexical Verb (-ing form) | 94.48% | 137 | 27,138 |
| Noun (proper) | 2.07% | 3 | 202,518 |
| Noun (singular) | 2.07% | 3 | 202,518 |
| Adjective (general or positive) | 1.38% | 2 | 245,945 |
| Total | 100.00% | 145 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "puffing": puffing adder ♦ puffing pig ♦ puffing up. Additional references. | |
| Hypenated Usage | |
Ending with "puffing": cigar-puffing. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
puffing billy | 16 |
puffing | 9 |
puffing smoke | 4 |
pipe puffing | 3 |
billy engineer hedley puffing | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "puffing"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Chinese | 喘气 (Gasped, gasping, Puffed). (various references) | |
Danish | puffing, puf (first blow, first puff, preblowing, puff). (various references) | |
Dutch | puffen (first blow, first puff, preblowing), poffen (puff up), voorblazen (first blow, first puff, preblowing). (various references) | |
Finnish | esipuhallus (first blow, first puff, preblowing). (various references) | |
French | perçage (first puff), soufflage, halètement, expansion. (various references) | |
German | Aufblähung (distention). (various references) | |
Greek | προφύσημα (first blow, first puff, preblowing), φύσημα (blast, blatancy, blow, flurry, gust, puff, snort, whiff), εμφύσηση (inflation). (various references) | |
Hebrew | נשיבה (blowing), נפוח (distending, exaggeration, inflated, inflation, puffy, swollen, tumid). (various references) | |
Indonesian | terengah-engah (pant, panting, wheez, winded), engap (panting, tight in the chest), engahan (panting). (various references) | |
Italian | presoffiatura (first blow, first puff, preblowing), Spigatura (coming into ear, ear emergence, heading, sprouting), soffiatura (blow, blow forming, blow hole, blowhole, blowing, gas bubble, gas pocket, insufflation, pitting, popping, void), soffiamento. (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | 喘ぎ (asthma, wheezing). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | あえぎ (asthma, wheezing). (various references) | |
Korean | 내뿜음 (exhaling, Flushing). (various references) | |
Manx | toghtaney jaaghag (puffing a cigarette), pussal jaagh (puffing smoke). (various references) | |
Pig Latin | uffingpay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | primeiro sopro (first blow, first puff, preblowing), perfuração (bore, caliber, calibre, cutting, puncture, rapierthrust). (various references) | |
Scottish | bustail. (various references) | |
Spanish | perforación de la primera fase (first blow, first puff, preblowing), perforación (boring, drilling, perforation, piercing, puncture), sopladura (blowhole, blowing, bubble), soplado previo (first blow, first puff, preblowing), soplado de retorno (first blow, first puff, preblowing), hinchamiento (blowing, bulkage, bulking, cheese blowing, dilatation, dilation, heave, swell, swelling, to swell), contrasoplado (first blow, first puff, preblowing). (various references) | |
Swedish | förblåsning (first blow, first puff, preblowing). (various references) | |
Turkish | şişme (distension, inflatable, inflated, intumescence, puff, swell, swelling, tumefaction), şişirme (fustian, inflation, overcharge, overstatement, puff, puffery, puffing up, swelling, tumefaction, turgescence, verbiage), abartılı reklâm (puff), açık artırmada fiyatın yükselmesi, üfleme (blast, blow, blowing, insufflation, puff, wind). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | inflationes. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Misspellings | |
"Puffing" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: lufyng, nuffing, puffings, puffkin. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "puffing" (pronounced pu"fing) |
| 4 | -u" f i ng | bluffing, huffing, rebuffing, roughing, ruffing, snuffing, stuffing. |
| 3 | -f i ng | beefing, briefing, chafing, choreographing, coffing, coughing, debriefing, doffing, dwarfing, engulfing, fireproofing, golfing, goofing, knifing, laughing, leafing, morphing, offing, photographing, proofing, roofing, rustproofing, sniffing, spiffing, spoofing, staffing, strafing, surfing, waterproofing. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "f-f-g-i-n-p-u" | |
-1 letter: puffin. | |
-2 letters: fungi. | |
-3 letters: guff, pfui, ping, puff, pung. | |
-4 letters: fig, fin, fug, fun, gin, gip, gnu, gun, iff, nip, pig, pin, piu, pug, pun. | |
-5 letters: if, in, nu, pi, un, up. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Images: Photo Album 7. Images: Digital Art 8. Usage Frequency | 9. Expressions 10. Expressions: Internet 11. Translations: Modern 12. Translations: Ancient | 13. Derivations 14. Rhymes 15. Anagrams 16. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
