pad out meaning: definition, quotations

pad out

verb

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.
Have you heard about girls padding out their bras to make their breasts look bigger?

1 more example

With regard to definition-writing students, as a result of having spent years padding out written assignments in order to meet word-length requirements, were somewhat bemused to be told that fewer words were better than a long, wordy definition.2015, James Lambert, “Lexicography as a teaching tool: A Hong Kong case study”, in Lan Li, Jamie McKeown, Liming Liu, editors, Dictionaries and corpora: Innovations in reference science. Proceedings of ASIALEX 2015 Hong Kong, Hong Kong: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, page 146:

Idiomatic, Slang To sleep or go to bed.

Because of my job I usually pad out just before nine o'clock.
My housemate was very annoyed to find my friends padded out on the lounge room floor this morning.