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puffy

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Etymology and origin of the English word puffy

Confidence
Established
Formation
Derivation
First attested
1594 ''Edmond Ironside''
Ultimate origins
Middle English pufEnglish -y
Etymology tree
inherited borrowed derived
English puff
English puffy

Pronunciation

Etymology

It is formed from English puff + -y,[2][3][4][5][6] from the noun puff according to the OED,[2] from the noun or the verb according to the Shorter Oxford.[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Inflated in style or manner, bombastic, empty, vain: before 1594, in the play Edmond Ironside.[2] Etymonline also finds this figurative use first, in the 1590s,[3] and Dictionary.com dates the word to 1590–1600.[5]

Semantic evolution

The word first described language or people that were "puffed up", vain and bombastic; the Shorter Oxford calls this use now rare.[2][4][3] The literal sense, swollen or inflated, followed in 1598, in Marston's satires,[2] although Etymonline dates it only to the 1660s.[3] Of wind, "blowing in puffs, gusty", it is recorded from 1616,[2] and since 1799 it has been used of a person or animal that was short of breath.[2][4] Johnson (1755) gave "windy, flatulent" and "tumid, turgid", the second of a style.[6] In North America puffy was used from 1967 for a quilted jacket filled with down or a similar soft material, and since 1998 a puffy has also been the jacket itself.[2] In American drug slang a puffy was phencyclidine (PCP), recorded from 1984.[7]

Timeline

  • before 1594 – bombastic, vain, empty.[2]
  • 1598 – swollen, puffed up.[2]
  • 1616 – of wind, gusty, blowing in puffs.[2] Etymonline dates this sense to the 1610s.[2][3]
  • 1799 – of a person or animal, short of breath.[2]
  • 1967 – of a jacket, quilted and filled with down (originally North American).[2]
  • 1998 – noun, a quilted jacket.[2]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Swollen or bloated, especially of the face or eyes: Her eyes were puffy from lack of sleep.[8][9][2]
  2. Soft, rounded and full, as if inflated; of a jacket, quilted and filled with down.[2][9]
  3. Of wind, blowing in gusts.[8][9][2]
  4. Short of breath; breathless.[8][9][2]
  5. Vain or pompous; of style, bombastic.[8][9][4]

Noun

  1. (chiefly North American) A quilted, down-filled jacket.[2]

Word family

  • puffily
  • puffiness

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  6. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  7. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  8. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  9. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
Cite this entry

“Puffy.” Etymologically, 2 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/en/puffy. Accessed 2 Nov. 2026.

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