Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A fit of anger or annoyance; a pique: stormed off in a huff.
- v. To puff; blow.
- v. To make noisy, empty threats; bluster.
- v. To react indignantly; take offense.
- v. Slang To inhale the fumes of a volatile chemical or substance as a means of becoming intoxicated.
- v. To cause to puff up; inflate.
- v. To treat with insolence; bully.
- v. To anger; annoy.
- v. Slang To inhale the fumes of (a volatile chemical, for example) as a means of becoming intoxicated.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To puff or blow.
- To dilate; swell up: as, the bread huffs.
- To swell with anger, pride, or arrogance; bluster; storm; rant.
- To swell; puff; distend.
- To treat with insolence or arrogance; rebuke rudely; hector.
- In chess, to remove from the board, as a captured piece.
- In checkers, to remove from the board, as a piece belonging to one player, as a penalty for not having taken an exposed piece belonging to the other. It is usual for the player, in removing the piece, to blow upon it. See huff, n., 3.
- n. A swell of sudden anger or arrogance; a fit of petulance or ill humor.
- n. One puffed up with an extravagant opinion of his own value or importance.
- n. In checkers, the removal of a player's piece from the board when, having the chance, he refuses or neglects to capture one or more of his opponent's pieces. The latter may, however, if he deems it to his advantage, demand the capture instead of removing the piece. The removal is usually marked by blowing on the piece.
- n. Light paste, or pie-crust.
- n. A dry, scurfy, or scaly incrustation on the skin.
- n. Strong beer.
- Angry; huffish.
Wiktionary
- n. A heavy breath; a grunt or sigh.
- n. An expression of anger, annoyance, disgust, etc.
- n. obsolete A boaster; one swelled with a false sense of value or importance.
- v. To breathe heavily.
- v. To inhale psychoactive inhalants
- v. To say in a huffy manner
- v. draughts To remove an opponent's piece as a forfeit for deliberately not taking a piece (often signalled by blowing on it)
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To swell; to enlarge; to puff up.
- v. To treat with insolence and arrogance; to chide or rebuke with insolence; to hector; to bully.
- v. (Draughts) To remove from the board (the piece which could have captured an opposing piece). See Huff, v. i., 3.
- v. To enlarge; to swell up.
- v. To bluster or swell with anger, pride, or arrogance; to storm; to take offense.
- v. (Draughts) To remove from the board a man which could have captured a piece but has not done so; -- so called because it was the habit to blow upon the piece.
- n. A swell of sudden anger or arrogance; a fit of disappointment and petulance or anger; a rage.
- n. A boaster; one swelled with a false opinion of his own value or importance.
WordNet 3.0
- v. inhale recreational drugs
- v. blow hard and loudly
- n. a state of irritation or annoyance
Etymologies
- Imitative of the sound of puffing. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Some editor of Hall has endeavoured to explain the term huff-cap by _blustering, swaggering.”
The Dialect of the West of England; Particularly Somersetshire
“For a domestic audience, Mr. Sarkozy gets proof that his return last year to NATO's military command after a 40-year De Gaulle-orchestrated huff is paying dividends.”
The Wall Street Journal: Entente Frugal: There Has to Be More to Defense Policy Than Saving Money
“Do you huff from a can of spray paint before you write every post?”
“* Walks off in huff, with pork pie hat at a rakish angle and overly large trousers*”
“This whole terrorist detainee huff is a giant nothing.”
“Leaving the other passengers to await the motions of the driver, the blacksmith, and the black 'huff'-holder, we trudged on through the mud, and in about two hours reached the next station.”
The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 Devoted To Literature And National Policy
“Not, as I well know, that peace is the key-note, or even the dominant one, of country life: every village is a microcosm, and flouncing out of council-rooms in a huff is a parochial, as well as an international, sport; nature, if no longer red in tooth and claw, can still deal some pretty telling blows; and there are always tithes.”
“He at least would have prevented Lady Ambermere, the only cornerstone of the party, from going away in what must be called a huff, and have continued to tell Lucia how marvellous she was, and what a beautiful party they were having.”
“He also observes that the sound of hard breathing "is represented by the syllables puff, huff, whiff, whence a huff is a fit of ill-temper.”
“The huff is a big opinion based blog that liberals take as complete fact without questioning a bit of it.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘huff’.
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SMILE and other emotive verbs
Single verbs that describe expression or emotional reaction. "He __ed" (smiled/gulped/scoffed...)
smile, beam, sneer, scoff, giggle, laugh, snigger, scowl, grin, leer, wince, grimace and 97 more...
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Public List: Two by Fives
This is an experiment in public lists--something I've been thinking about for some time. The goal is to create a collection of short, powerful, evocative words.
This is an open list. A...icy, howl, hymn, thorn, fire, vile, mist, blunt, scum, dark, shot, gleam and 221 more...
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New Words
No definite conception of these words.
reggaeton, fugacious, astray, artillery, quietism, heteronomy, plebeian, remit, hypostasize, discountenance, rictus, wail and 60 more...
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Words For Novel
viridity, effigy, paragon, congested, acrid, lilting, clandestine, plethora, accolade, sardonic, naïve, reckoning and 285 more...
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kalidas's Words
crepuscular, mellifluous, ephemeral, diaphanous, zeitgeist, geisterfahrer, infinite, eternal, idyllic, azure, reminiscent, oblivion and 521 more...
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What, another list?
ravishing, ravenous, pronk, brinksmanship, jaspe, mottle, chasm, testy, temperament, ponder, personally, phantom and 206 more...
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the hotlist
short, sweet, epic, catchy, sassy, sexy & sizzling.
( personal list, randomness )
more:
http://www.wordnik.com/lists/...zing, epic, win, fail, hot, warp, times, clip, onyx, wonky, pwn, leet and 1493 more...
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succinct
don't use a long word when a short one will do
huff, sass, shady, quirk, thwart, munge, kludge, kitsch, schlock, nix, tromp, trudge and 22 more...
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General English
huff, lunge, baffling, diffuse, enmeshed, coerce, inadvertently, determinate, raid, scold, rail, shabby and 13 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for huff.

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