Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A rude, insensitive person; a boor.
- v. To produce or move with noisy puffing or explosive sounds: "Switch engines chuffed impatiently in busy rail yards” ( Robert Paul Jordan).
- n. A noisy puffing or explosive sound, such as one made by a locomotive.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A coarse, heavy, dull fellow; a surly or churlish person; an avaricious old fellow.
- Surly; churlish; ill-tempered.
- n. A cheek.
- Chuffy; plump.
Wiktionary
- adj. UK Surly.
- adj. UK, dialect stupid; churlish
- n. A coarse or stupid fellow.
- v. transitive, slang To purposefully fail a standardized test in a conspicuous way.
- v. intransitive To make noisy puffing sounds, as of a steam locomotive.
- v. UK, informal To break wind.
- n. scriptwriting, uncountable Superfluous small talk that is free of conflict, offers no character development, description or insight, and does not advance the story or plot.
- adj. UK Pleased.
- adj. obsolete Swollen with fat.
- adj. vulgar slang, of cheeks Swollen.
- n. vulgar slang The vagina.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A coarse or stupid fellow.
- adj. Prov. Eng. Stupid; churlish.
WordNet 3.0
- v. blow hard and loudly
Etymologies
- 1520s, in sense “swollen with fat”; circa 1860, British dialect, in sense “pleased”. Possibly related to “coarse, stupid, fat-headed” sense. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English chuffe.Imitative. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Big cats have their own repertoire of sounds e.g. the rumbled greeting of lionesses and the distinctive "chuff" of tigers.”
“The engine starts with grumpy whine and wet chuff, and then falls into a sullen idle.”
The Wall Street Journal: Nissan GT-R: A 'Halo Car' With Devil's Horns
“Draught horses are led around the smaller ring, and nearby dozens of stationary engines chuff, splutter and bounce on individual pitches.”
“In the words of a delightful colloquialism where I come from: these pitchers are as keeping it as "tight as a gnat's chuff".”
The Guardian: St Louis Cardinals v Philadelphia Phillies - live! | Steve Busfield
“He left me alone, I worked my nuts off and we locked up loads of villans and put them in prison and I squared away some lazy tossers who did chuff all for their money.”
“Anyway, Charlotte is a treat to the eye as well as a pain in the chuff.”
“There was an arrangement of Coltrane's "Moment's Notice" with Chestnut spinning droplets of notes over the percussive chuff of the violins and the bass-like thumping of the cello; a joyous rendition of Clapton's "Crossroads"; and Marshall's bass mandolin, down-home-sounding version of "Gator Strut.”
The Washington Post: In performance: Turtle Island Quartet at 25
“Griffith was off before the first chuff finished chuffing.”
“In the first 10 minutes of the game (after, I must chuff, I did get one batter out), a sneaking runner made a judgment call to come back to first - catcher threw the ball to me at about 300 kph (felt like that anyway!), which bounced on the hard packed dirt around me, clipped my thumb and bounced into the side of my face.”
“ They have things to help them, like creatures, but not; things that roar and chuff and belch smoke.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘chuff’.
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buttocks
words for buttocks and anything
to do with buttockshiney, heiney, nates, hindquarters, bum, backside, behind, bottom, breech, bunny, butt, can and 160 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11250 more...
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UK - slang
chin wag, arse about, bollock, starkers, sweet Fanny Adams, skive, shufti, codswallop, rhyming slang, bollocks, nookie, skew-whiff and 208 more...
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AGRI - horse breeding
place bet, Przewalski's horse, piaffe, genus Claviceps, stadium jumping, draft animal, snaffle bit, noseband, equestrian sport, endurance riding, curb bit, dressage and 678 more...
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wallace
Remington, Windsor, prorector, wen, aver, mottle, seltzer, tepee, lapidary, effete, sotto, presbyopia and 355 more...
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[Open] Infrequentative
Non-frequentative verbs which also have a frequentative form (which you may add to the list “Frequentative”, if you like)
Examples include bob (bobble), busk (bustle), dab (dabble), ho...hove, stut, wag, dab, dart, spouse, sault, prate, swag, visé, cater, nose and 33 more...
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minneapolitan's Words
hissyfit, fussbudget, aghast, lament, trichinellosis, tranche, decadent, aspersion, pejorative, aniline, galoshes, accede and 200 more...
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Infinite Jest
Words taken from Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
prorector, monograph, post-fourier, snuffle, rototremble, creatus, enfilade, subanimalistic, balletic, espadrilles, leonine, cirri and 1153 more...
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azd's Words
adamantine, abatial, ablate, ablative, abrogate, accretive, acromegaly, acrostic, actinism, actinic, acuity, adduce and 968 more...
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Joshee Word List
gash, engross, entail, stoke, ode, vacillate, aspersion, asperity, clan, kith, prospect, nag and 229 more...
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British Cant & Slang, Old & New
Mostly, the cant words come from my reprint of Francis Grose's 1785 dictionary of 'The Vulgar Tongue', while the more modern slang has been found at various online sources, e.g. this online diction...
bog-standard, bumbaclot, brown trouser moment, bingo wings, bobfoc, babber, sweating, tantadlin tart, taplash, timber toe, tray trip, twiddle-diddles and 209 more...
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Learned words
Words which are highly likely to be found in the work of learned writers.
ailurophile, labyrinthine, lagniappe, colleague, anechoic, reglets, fluctuations, scalar, implicit, constitute, mortification, ambassadors and 629 more...
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Wordie/Wordnik Curio Cabinet
Oddments culled from my "main" lists that belong in a display cabinet of their own, plus sundry other curiosities. :-)
zeugma, ziggurat, xiphoid, xeric, whizgigging, whangdoodle, viviparous, vivific, vinolent, verjuice, vellicate, velleity and 1193 more...
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Words to Use
Good for vocab! The seemingly common words are actually referring to lesser-known definitions.
depravity, lampoonery, copacetic, ferrule, feat, saddle, scroop, auteur, demiurge, paunch, peripatetic, demur and 104 more...
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courtneyah's Words
sigh, troglodyte, lithe, cambium, bark, poem, trochee, minute, ablution, hermeneutic, dogwood, mystique and 98 more...
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Words
apoplectic, absolve, accentuate, accost, acrimony, adjudicate, adulate, affront, agrarian, alacrity, ambivalence, ascetic and 120 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for chuff.
kmocol01 aha, thanks for that. I had a feeling 'chuff' and 'chuffed' were two completely different things in Brit slang Nov 21, 2009
rolig A British euphemism for female genitalia, as in "Phoenix is dryer than a nun's chuff," to quote the Urban Dictionary example. Aug 18, 2008
yarb Citation on flexitone. Jul 30, 2008