Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Having the character of a bluff; precipitous or steep.
  • Inclining to bluffness in appearance or manner.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Having bluffs, or bold, steep banks.
  • adjective Inclined to bo bluff; brusque.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Having bluffs, or bold steep banks.
  • adjective Inclined to be brusque.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

bluff +‎ -y

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Examples

  • Going at good speed as ever, in a few minutes they arrive at the confluence of the _arroyo_ with the greater river; the former here running between banks less "bluffy" than above, where it passes the cavern.

    Gaspar the Gaucho A Story of the Gran Chaco Mayne Reid 1850

  • They chose for their purpose bluffy headlands leading out into the river plain.

    The Prehistoric World; or, Vanished races Emory Adams Allen

  • What strange fancy it was that led them to mould the figures on the bluffy banks of the rivers and the high lands about the lakes of their country, we shall perhaps never know.

    The Prehistoric World; or, Vanished races Emory Adams Allen

  • The bluffy individual, doubtless a Republican who had pocketed his many thousands, spoke of the widows of the land, made so by the war.

    Behind the scenes, 1907

  • A mile below the town flowed the Holston River, which on our side had high, bluffy banks.

    The end of an era, 1899

  • The trail had left the woodland far to the eastward, and wound its way over broad prairie billows, past bluffy-banked streams, along crests of low watersheds, until at last it slid down into an open endlessness of the

    Winning the Wilderness Margaret Hill McCarter 1899

  • The difficulties of search are enormously increased by the broken character of a rolling bluffy prairie.

    The Foreigner A Tale of Saskatchewan Ralph Connor 1898

  • Not far afield on either hand came the black corn-land, but up and down the bluffy sides of the brook for some distance on both sides of the King-dragged highway, ran the old wood-lot, now regaining much of the unkempt appearance which characterized it when Jim Irwin had drawn upon himself the gentle rebuke of Old Man Simms for not giving a whoop from the big road before coming into the yard.

    The Brown Mouse Herbert Quick 1893

  • Pittsburg Landing side are steep and bluffy, rising about 100 feet above the level of the river.

    The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 Leander Stillwell 1888

  • The latter are uniformly rock bound, frequently bluffy or precipitous, from 20 to 1,500 feet in height, with generally very limited borders of level country, the base of the steep mountains reaching down to the sea, with but narrow foothill slopes.

    Official Report of the Exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands for the Government of British Columbia 1882

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