filler

See also: Filler and fillér

English

Etymology

Etymology tree

English fill

Proto-Indo-European *-yósder.

Proto-Italic *-āzijos

Latin -āriusnom.

Latin -āriusbor.

Proto-Germanic *-ārijaz

Proto-West Germanic *-ārī

Old English -ere

Middle English -ere

English -er

English filler

From fill + -er.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈfɪləː/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (General American, Standard Canadian) IPA^(key): /ˈfɪlɚ/
• Rhymes: -ɪlə(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: fil‧ler

Noun

filler (plural fillers)

1. One who fills.
   • 1707, J[ohn] Mortimer, The Whole Art of Husbandry; or, The Way of Managing and Improving of Land. […], London: […] J[ohn] H[umphreys] for H[enry] Mortlock […], and J[onathan] Robinson […], →OCLC:

     They commonly have three, four, five, or six hewers or diggers, to four fillers, so as to keep the fillers always at work.

2. Something added to fill a space or add weight or size.
   • 1977, Stereo Review, volume 38, page 70:

     I recommend this album in the face of the fact that five of the eleven songs are the purest filler, dull instrumentals with a harmonica rifling over an indifferent rhythm section. The rest is magnificent […]

3. Any semisolid substance used to fill gaps, cracks or pores.
4. (cosmetic surgery) A dermal filler, a substance injected beneath the skin to restore lost volume.
   • 2023 January 24, Amy Synnott, quoting Dr. Frank, “Those Weight Loss Drugs May Do a Number on Your Face”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN, archived from the original on 24 January 2023:

     A 50-year-old patient will come in, and suddenly, she’s super-skinny and needs filler, which she never needed before.

5. A relatively inert ingredient added to modify physical characteristics; a bulking agent.
   • 2014 April, Ken Seufert, “The New Dawn of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing: Innovative Solutions for Unprecedented Challenges”, in American Pharmaceutical Review, 17(3):9:

     The word "filler" is taboo in the excipient world.

6. A short article in a newspaper or magazine.
7. A short piece of music or an announcement between radio or TV programmes.
9. (linguistics) Any spoken sound or word used to fill gaps in speech; filled pause.
   • 1697, Virgil, “Dedication”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:

     'Tis a meer filler; to ſtop a vacancy in the Hexameter, and connect the Preface to the Work of Virgil.

   • 2007 August 24, William Grimes, “Uh, Lead My Rips: No More Bloopers”, in The New York Times‎^[2], archived from the original on 4 January 2013:

     As the years go by, speech reverts to childhood levels of disfluency, with more pauses, more errors, more repeated words, but even the peak years are not great: up to 8 percent of the average person’s word output consists of meaningless fillers and placeholders like um, uh and er.

10. Cut tobacco used to make up the body of a cigar.
11. (programming) In COBOL, the description of an unnamed part of a record that contains no data relevant to a given context (normally capitalised when in a data division).
12. (horticulture) A plant that lacks a distinctive shape and can fill inconvenient spaces around other plants in pots or gardens.
13. (forestry, usually in the plural) Any standing tree or standard higher than the surrounding coppice in the form of forest known as "coppice under standards".
14. (television, music) A material of lower cost or quality that is used to fill a certain television time slot or physical medium, such as a music album.
    • 2004, Christian David Hoard, Nathan Brackett (editors), The New Rolling Stone Album Guide, page 704:

      With the exception of her movie soundtracks — Lady Sings the Blues, and its flashy renditions of Billie Holiday standards, and the much less interesting Mahogany — Ross' early-'70s albums mixed predictably strong hits and an overabundance of filler.

Derived terms

• field filler
• filler cap
• filler episode
• filler phrase
• filler-upper
• filler word
• floor-filler
• nanofiller
• postfiller
• prefiller
• seat filler
• shelf filler
• spacefiller
• stocking filler

Translations

something added to fill a space

• Bulgarian: пълнеж (bg) m (pǎlnež)
• French: filler (fr) m
• Galician: rebo m
• Japanese: フィラー (firā)
• Polish: wypełniacz m, zapchajdziura f (derogatory)
• Russian: наполнитель (ru) m (napolnitel')
• Slovak: výplň, vata, vypchávka
• Ukrainian: напо́внювач m (napóvnjuvač)
• Welsh: llenwad m

substance used to fill gaps, cracks, pores

• German: Spachtelmasse (de) f, Füllmasse f

a relatively inert ingredient added to modify physical characteristics

• Bulgarian: пълнител m (pǎlnitel)
• Greek: σφράγισμα (el) n (sfrágisma)
• Polish: substancja pomocnicza f
• Portuguese: preenchimento (pt) m

any spoken sound or word used to fill gaps in speech; filled pause

• Dutch: stopwoord (nl) n
• German: Füllwort (de) n
• Hungarian: töltelékszó (hu)
• Icelandic: hikorð (is) n
• Japanese: フィラー (firā)
• Russian: слово-паразит (ru) (slovo-parazit)
• Spanish: muletilla (es) f, latiguillo (es) m, estribillo (es) m, bordón (es) m, bordoncillo (es) m, cantaleta (es) f
• Ukrainian: слово-паразит (slovo-parazyt)

Anagrams

• refill

Norwegian Bokmål

Noun

filler m or f

1. indefinite plural of fille

Norwegian Nynorsk

Noun

filler f

1. indefinite plural of fille

Turkish

Noun

filler

1. nominative plural of fil