padding (pading)

[Verbal n. of pad3, v.] 1. The act of stuffing so as to make a pad.-2. 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. The materials used are, especially-( a ) a rough felted cloth, a kind of shoddy; (b) fibrous and loose material; (c) wadding, batting, and bombast. 3. In calico - printing, the proce of imbuing the fabric all over with a mordant which is dried. A design is next printed on it in acid discharge (usually lime-juice and bisulphate of potash), the result being that, after the cloth has been dyed in the bath and cleared, white patterns appear upon a ground of uniform color. These white patterns or spaces may be afterward printed upon in steam or pigment colors. Calicoes produced in this way are said to be in the padding or plaquage style. A brown ground is produced over the entire surface by padding in solutions of a salt of manganese. Workshop Receipts, 2d ser., p. 212. 4. Any unnece ary 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 anything without adding to its interest or value. Anybody who desires to know what is within the power of the average clergyman may take up one of the inferior magazines and read one of the articles which serve for padding . Saturday Rev. I am perhaps more struck now with the enormous amount of padding -the number of third and fourth-rate statues which weary the eye that would fain approach freshly the twenty and thirty best. Henry James, Jr., Trans. Sketches, p. 205. padding-flue (pad'ing-flö), n . In calico - print ing , a drying-chamber in which cotton cloth is dried after the proce of padding. It has several forms, but each generally comprises an inclosed pa age of considerable length through which heated air is circulated in one direction, while the padded piece is unwound from a roller and pa ed through the flue in the opposite direction, being dried during its pa age, and finally rewound upon another cylinder. See pad3 , v., 3, and padding , 3. padding-ken (pad'ing-ken), n . A low lodging house patronized by footpads, profe ional beggars, thieves, vagrants, etc. [Thieves' slang.] Ragged Schools and City Mi ions are of no avail as preventitives of crime so long as the wretched dens of infamy, brutality, and vice, termed padding - kens , continue their daily and nightly work of demoralization. Mayhew , London Labour and London Poor, I. 454. In