cream puff

See also: creampuff

English

Cream puffs (sense 1)

Alternative forms

• creampuff

Noun

cream puff (plural cream puffs)

1. A light, hollow pastry typically filled with cream or custard.
2. (figuratively, informal) A weak or ineffectual person.
   • 1947, 2 min 55 sec from the start, in My Favorite Brunette:

     — Oh, Mr. Jackson, I think you're wonderful. You've really got what it takes.
     — Well, I ain't exactly a cream puff.

   • 1992, “Warm It Up”, in Totally Krossed Out, performed by Kris Kross:

     You little cream puff Mac Daddy wannabe / Keep dreaming 'cause a Mac you will never be

   • 2005, Jerry Remy, Watching Baseball: Discovering the Game Within the Game, page 298:

     Everybody wants to be liked, whether they are a hard-ass or a cream puff. That's very difficult in baseball.

3. (slang) An old motor vehicle in especially good condition.
4. (slang, baseball) A weak pitch.
   • 2000, W. P. Kinsella, Baseball Fantastic: Stories:

     So instead of lobbing a cream puff, I kicked up my leg and brought the Ruttlemyer Express.

   • 2011, Paul Dickson, Skip McAfee, The Dickson Baseball Dictionary (Third Edition), page 225:

     Joseph “Stretch” Suba, a batting-practice pitcher, served up “big, fat, medium fast cream puffs for the All-Star hitters […]

5. (slang, Scotland) A state of mild annoyance or irritation.

   to be in the cream puff

   • 1992, Jeff Torrington, Swing Hammer Swing!, London: Secker & Warburg, →ISBN, page 338:

     'You still in the cream puff, or what?' I shook my head. No, I wasn't in the huff.

6. (slang, dated) A gay man.
   • 1967, Joan Colebrook, The Cross of Lassitude: Portraits of Five Delinquents, Alfred A. Knopf, page 72:

     "Why'm I here? You ask that Big Guinea why I'm here? . . . He thinks I'm a ruff-tuff cream puff and that the only way I'm goin' to learn my lesson is by puttin' me away. That's why I'm here. Well, he got to think different that's all. He'd say I was a whore, and now my test says I'm negative ... So I guess he's got another think coming . . ."

7. (military slang, obsolete) An exploding shell.

Hypernyms

• (light pastry): cream cake

Derived terms

• cream puff piece

Translations

hollow pastry filled with cream or custard

• Catalan: profiterola f
• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 忌簾泡芙／忌帘泡芙 (gei⁶ lim¹ pou⁵ fu⁴), 泡芙 (pou⁵ fu⁴)

  Mandarin: 奶油泡芙 (nǎiyóu pàofú), 泡芙 (zh) (pàofú)

• Czech: větrník (cs) m
• Danish: flødebolle (da) c
• Dutch: soesje (nl) n
• Finnish: tuulihattu (fi)
• French: chou à la crème (fr) m, chou (fr) m
• German: Windbeutel (de) m, (Austria) Brandteigkrapferl n, (Switzerland) Ofenküchlein n
• Greek: σου (el) n (sou)
• Hebrew: פַּחְזָנִית (he) f (pachzanít)
• Indonesian: kue sus
• Italian: bignè (it) m, bignè alla panna m, bignè alla crema m
• Japanese: シュークリーム (ja) (shū-kurīmu)
• Kannada: ಕ್ರೀಮ್ ಪಫ಼್ (krīm paf)
• Korean: 슈크림 (syukeurim)
• Marathi: क्रीम पफ m (krīm paph)
• Persian: نان خامه‌ای (nân xâme-i)
• Polish: ptyś (pl) m
• Spanish: bocadito de nata m, petisú m
• Swedish: petit-chou c
• Thai: ชูอาลาแครม (chuu-aa-laa-krɛɛm), ครีมพัฟ (kriim-páf)
• Turkish: profiterol (tr)
• Vietnamese: bánh su kem

References

• “cream puff”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• Jonathon Green (2024) “cream puff n.¹”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang
• “cream puff, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.