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upholster

UK /əˈpɒl.stə(ɹ)/verb

upholster is a verb meaning “To fit padding, stuffing, springs, webbing and fabric covering to (furniture)” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled U-P-H-O-L-S-T-E-R and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 48 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).

What does upholster mean?

verb

  1. 1

    To fit padding, stuffing, springs, webbing and fabric covering to (furniture).

noun

  1. 1

    archaicAn upholder, a dealer in secondhand furniture and clothes; an upholsterer; a tradesman who finishes furniture.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce upholster?

  • UK /əˈpɒl.stə(ɹ)/
  • UK /əˈpɐl.stə(ɹ)/

Upholster has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-upholster.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of upholster

  • upholsters present, singular, he/she/it
  • upholstering participle, present
  • upholstered participle, past
  • upholdster

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is upholster?

Upholster appears about once in every 48 million words in written English, the 214,628th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Upholster in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense fit padding etc. to furniture:

LanguageWords
Germanaufpolstern, polstern, tapezieren
Spanishtapizar

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does upholster come from?

Back-formation from upholsterer (“tradesman who finishes furniture”), from Middle English upholdester, variant of Middle English upholder (“dealer in small goods”), from upholden (“to repair, uphold”); equivalent to uphold + -ster. Sense development as well as form may have been influenced by conflation with unrelated bolster.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).