Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Chiefly British Slang A scientist, especially one engaged in research.
Wiktionary
- n. UK, informal A scientist or engineer, especially one engaged in technological or military research.
- n. this sense?) An elderly naval officer.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. British slang a scientist or technician, especially one engaged in military research.
WordNet 3.0
- n. (British slang) a scientist or technician engaged in military research
Etymologies
- Unknown (Wiktionary)
- Origin unknown. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Checking on the boffin was her first responsibility, a duty she was already late for.”
“Seriously, the boffin was a particular type of scientist who could understand the viewpoint of the services, who worked with them, and who frequently shared their dangers.”
“Just in case you still think Jones is just some no-name boffin toiling pitifully in academia's climate change coal mines, one file in the exposed CRU records reveals that he has collected 13.7 million in grants since 1990.”
“Before he found TV success in The Thick of It, Chris Addison was known as the boffin-comic:”
“I think the word "boffin" should get its own tag...it's magnificent.”
“In connection with a major TV series they are producing about the OED, the BBC has set up a nifty Word Hunt site where readers can help identify the origins and first uses of 50 terms, ranging from "boffin" and "bog standard" to "ska" and "snazzy.”
“Calling anyone within a 100 yard radius of a petri dish a "boffin".”
“boffin" is a real account, but there is no indication as to why it is abused in this spam.”
“Rather that just being a high-concept boffin, dazzling the world with limited-edition objects, he's a serious and expansive thinker with a vision toward moving his profession into the future—and democratizing it at the same time.”
“Things kick off tonight with a performance by Mark Aerial Waller, interpreting conceptual artist and science boffin John Latham's Government Of The First And Thirteenth Chair, an attempt to reconcile the infinite expanse of time with the fleeting moment.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘boffin’.
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In The Laboratory
List of laboratory glassware and apparatuses, machines, tools, etc., starting with burette.
Please feel free to help me populate this list, all you mad scientist Wordniks.burette, reagent bottle, Erlenmeyer flask, pipette, centrifuge, ultracentrifuge, beaker, spot plate, crucible, flask, mortar, pestle and 117 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2046 more...
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Steampunk
Words used quite often in steampunk
ansible, airship, chymical, valve, clockwork, dirigible, thaumaturgy, copper, bronze, difference engine, gear, rivets and 516 more...
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Philosophic , etymology
every major discipline has uniquely developed esoteric nomenclature to facilitate interdisciplinary dissemination
quale , qualia, elegy, tacet, lexicon, annunciate, caste, eros, contrive, purlicue, irony, venacular, dilapidate and 567 more...
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Super Geeky Word List
as a techie, I run across nerd words.
brane, polyamide, phb, PHB, BOFH, redditor, grammar nazi, phaser, trending, SPOILER ALERT, surface mount, FMEA and 73 more...
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Fancy Foreign Words
de facto, Zeitgeist, schadenfreude, apropos, per se, Auteur, tookus, de rigueur, xyst, arrivederci, sotto, troika and 15 more...
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Remember Not To Forget
Sephardic, Umwelt, amphiboly, untrammeled, sequela, pandiculation, tensegrity, syncretism, pugilism, shemagh, disquisition, perspicacity and 65 more...
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Irish English that's not in American ...
Well-known phrases in Irish English that aren't understood in American English.
or next offer, hoover, plaster, soother, chimnea, craic, bits and bobs, grinds, jumper, mum, chancer, ticks all the boxes and 60 more...
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work these into conversation
Challenge!
legerdemain, polysemic, rupestrian, callipygian, oscitancy, numen, lucubration, asperity, amalgam, apposite, wastrel, eleemosynary and 208 more...
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Brinstar's Words
cobalt, obfuscate, archon, wii, sniper, arcane, celerity, visage, auspicious, ether, epidemic, lich and 138 more...
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epeolatrist's list
epeolatry, syzygy, sphallolalia, lucubration, lugubrious, cacology, mellifluous, tmesis, synecdoche, anathema, eschatological, razbliuto and 349 more...
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cloudjuice's Words
schadenfreude, sordid, promulgate, erratic, erroneous, amalgamate, sesquipedalian, incongruous, psychosis, etymology, simulacrum, serendipity and 988 more...
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bertilak's Words
antidisestablishm..., feldercarb, wainscoting, eleemosynary, oxymoron, fuliginous, libration, lammergeier, saxifrage, ichor, lambent, smaragdine and 414 more...
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vinyl's Words
deliverator, finna, metric fuckton, fag, hyphy, ginormous, sacrilicious, fantabulous, macaca, n-word, pterodactyl, genious and 560 more...
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The Collection
A somewhat discriminatory list of words and phrases collected for their euphonic or arcane appeal, interesting etymology, or concise definition of an otherwise unnamed phenomenon or concept.
ziggurat, neophilia, sucker punch, soporific, epoch, tundra, fiat, idiotproof, miscellany, metaphysics, cryptozoology, dysphoria and 850 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for boffin.
yarb Algeria consult overseas boffins to get World Cup edge. May 5, 2010
agatehinge Another idea for an image of defenestrated boffins... a depiction in the manner of Monty Python re: Admiral Nelson. May 5, 2010
agatehinge Defenestrated boffins, as I imagine them: cartoon May 5, 2010
reesetee Gangerh, I was just going to say that it reminds me of the sound of fufluns hitting something soft. ;-) May 4, 2010
gangerh A defenestrated boffin, then.
*hurls hard stale cupcake* May 3, 2010
agatehinge This should also be a hard stale biscuit that you may throw out of a window above the second floor. May 2, 2010
Prolagus
(I just want your jeans, by God Help the Girl) May 2, 2010
reesetee And here I thought that a boffin was a nice little seabird. Jan 13, 2009
john “Many thanks go out to Evan Sandhaus and the other boffins at R&D for making this resource publicly available to researchers.�?
The New York Times, Fatten Up Your Corpus, by Jacob Harris, January 12, 2009 Jan 12, 2009
yarb I heard that in Iceland they eat boffins. Oct 12, 2007
ulleskelf In tabloid newspapers, scientists are always boffins - "Boffins today discovered..." - especially if it's a not particularly serious piece of research. Boffins would never discover the cure for cancer, but they would tell us why toast always lands buttered-side down on the floor. Oct 12, 2007