padding

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

• noun The act of stuffing, filling, or lining.
• noun A soft material used to make pads or a pad.
• noun Something added, especially extraneously or fraudulently.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The act of stuffing so as to make a pad.
• noun The cotton, hair, straw, or other material used in stuffing anything, as a bolster, saddle, or garment; the stuffing used to keep in shape any part of a garment according to the fashion which requires it to be more in relief or drawn tighter than the natural forms allow. ; ;
• noun In calico-printing, the process of imbuing the fabric all over with a mordant which is dried.
• noun Any unnecessary matter inserted in a column, article, book, etc., merely to bring it up to a certain size; vamp; hence, written or printed matter of no real value or utility; whatever has merely the effect of increasing the size of any thing without adding to its interest or value.

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

• noun The act or process of making a pad or of inserting stuffing.
• noun The material with which anything is padded.
• noun Material of inferior value, serving to extend a book, essay, etc.
• noun (Calico Printing) The uniform impregnation of cloth with a mordant.

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

• verb Present participle of pad.
• noun Soft filling material used in cushions etc.
• noun computing Extra characters such as spaces added to the end of a record to fill it out to a fixed length.

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

• noun artifact consisting of soft or resilient material used to fill or give shape or protect or add comfort