- a soft sticky substance that becomes hard when it is dry and that is used for fixing glass into window frames
- He looked very ill and his face was the colour of putty (= grey).
Oxford Collocations DictionaryPutty is used before these nouns:- knife
Word Originmid 17th cent.: from French potée, literally ‘potful’, from pot ‘pot’.
Idioms
See putty in the Oxford Advanced American Dictionary(like) putty in somebody’s hands
- easily controlled or influenced by another person
- She'll persuade him. He's like putty in her hands.
Check pronunciation:
putty