Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- interj. Used to indicate a sudden vanishing: The magician waved a wand, and poof! The birds disappeared!
- n. Offensive Slang Used as a disparaging term for an effeminate or homosexual male.
Wiktionary
- interj. Onomatopoeia indicating a cloud of smoke or wind; caused by a deflating object, or a magical disappearance.
- n. A male homosexual, especially one who is effeminate.
- n. The product of flatulence, or the sound of breaking wind.
- v. To vanish or disappear.
- v. To break wind; to fart.
WordNet 3.0
- n. offensive term for an openly homosexual man
Etymologies
- Imitative.Probably alteration of puff, braggart, homosexual man, from puff (influenced by poof1).
Examples
“The burden of poof is on those who would deny of commonsense ie hardwired position.”
“In the UK we’d call it a puff of smoke, a poof is a story altogether. scar”
“Reminds me of the hippie releasing the white 'dove of peace' in MARS ATTACKS which really and truly goes "poof" - more like "sizzlepoof.”
“And "poof" - he's still a toad - no matter how many times Billo kisses him.”
“Had there not been that glitch -- and I really don't like using the word "glitch" because that was your money going "poof" -- the Dow would have dropped 400 points, not 900.”
The Washington Post: Stocks close strongly, three major indexes return to positive for 2010
“It's good before a meal, after a meal, when drunk, when taking drugs, while playing football and after being called a poof in the street.”
“Madison aside, our midge presidents have not served us well: Van Buren was an entitled poof, Benjamin Harrison a craven seat-warmer, and even feisty Harry S. Truman bungled our entry into what was euphemistically called “the Korean conflict,” conspiring to get me into uniform precisely when I was in my sexual prime.”
“But police never believed him and, specifically, they pointed to this thing called poof dirt, which is the thing in the desert, which is dust.”
“But it all started here during the presidency of Ulysses Grant, the president who was known to imbibe, would sit on a sofa right here -- it was a round rose-colored sofa called a poof, in case you're wondering -- that they only removed last year.”
“I may hold the Seventies record for being called a poof the most times in public by complete strangers," he reports at one point.”
Telegraph.co.uk: news, business, sport, the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Sunday Telegraph
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘poof’.
-
Onomatopoetic
words (seemingly) formed in imitation of a natural sound
plash, guff, woof, splash, crash, pow, crack, bang, whoosh, whizz, whallop, fizz and 116 more...
-
sound (quiet)
words for quiet sounds
( randomness, descriptive )sigh, murmur, whisper, whir, rustle, patter, hum, snap, hiss(sss), crackle, bleat, peep and 185 more...
-
onomatopoeias (1 syllable)
1 syllable words that mean what they sound like. (dictionaried or un-dictionaried words | onomatopoeic in nature)
onomatopoeias (2 syllable) | onomatopoeias (3+ syllables)gush, buzz, pop, woof, boo, bam, bang, bash, bump, clang, clap, click and 86 more...
-
My Favorites
peanut, chipmunk, pearl, blueberry, graceful, poof, scrumptious, corny, scrambled, blimp, classy, butterfly and 1 more...
PossibleUnderscore Is this poof as in "Poof--he disappeared," or something else? Jul 19, 2009
vanishedone For that matter, hoof, hooves and hoove (not as common, but actually a word: 'a disease of cattle', says the O.E.D.) are all missing WordNet definitions. Since I can find hoof on http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn this may be a glitch in Wordie's implementation. Or some gremlin with a grudge against -oof words. Mar 21, 2009
bilby According to WordNet, the singular is poove. Mar 21, 2009
sarra Brilliantly, WordNet doesn't append its definition to this one; instead, it appears in pooves (!!) Oct 26, 2008