puffery
noun
puff·ery
ˈpə-f(ə-)rē 
: exaggerated commendation especially for promotional purposes : hype
Examples of puffery in a Sentence
the newspaper's local stories are often thinly disguised puffery for area businesses
Recent Examples on the Web
Secretly recorded telephone conversations of President Lyndon B. Johnson during his years in the White House reveal LBJ was a blunt, vulgar, scheming politician who was skilled at using a blend of bullying, puffery and arm-twisting to get his way.
—
Chris Roemer, Baltimore Sun, 19 Mar. 2026
But management also decided against trying to brag about these network-level changes with new status-bar icons or other sorts of customer-experience puffery.
—Rob Pegoraro, PC Magazine, 9 Mar. 2026
Sonny was married for more than 40 years to his beloved Margo — who, as was often the case of the wives of famous/infamous men, knew exactly how and when to best burst his occasional balloon of self-importance and puffery.
—David Aldridge, New York Times, 6 Feb. 2026
Vendor puffery may also be legal, but that means the IT customer needs a healthy skepticism of the typically too-good-to-be-true promises vendors make.
—IEEE Spectrum, 23 Nov. 2025
See All Example Sentences for puffery
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Chris Roemer, Baltimore Sun, 19 Mar. 2026
But management also decided against trying to brag about these network-level changes with new status-bar icons or other sorts of customer-experience puffery.
—Rob Pegoraro, PC Magazine, 9 Mar. 2026
Sonny was married for more than 40 years to his beloved Margo — who, as was often the case of the wives of famous/infamous men, knew exactly how and when to best burst his occasional balloon of self-importance and puffery.
—David Aldridge, New York Times, 6 Feb. 2026
Vendor puffery may also be legal, but that means the IT customer needs a healthy skepticism of the typically too-good-to-be-true promises vendors make.
—IEEE Spectrum, 23 Nov. 2025
See All Example Sentences for puffery
Cite this Entry
“Puffery.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/puffery. Accessed 2 Apr. 2026.
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