Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A rock composed of compacted volcanic ash varying in size from fine sand to coarse gravel. Also called tufa.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Same as tuft.
- An old spelling of tough.
- n. A volcanic fragmental rock, varying from coarse deposits made of materials resembling fine gravel in size to those which are like the finest sand. Corsi defines tufo as being similar in composition to peperino, but bearing the marks of having been transported by and deposited from water. The tophus of Vitruvius and Columella was of volcanic origin; that of Virgil and Pliny was calcareous. The tufo of the Italians, at the present time, is volcanic, and is the same rock which was designated by the Romans as lapis ruber; it closely resembles peperino (the lapis Albanus of the Romans), and does not differ, except in color and degree of compactness from the modern sperone (lapis Gabium), or from the socalled
manziana (lapis Anitianus). These are all fragmental rocks made up of more or less firmly compacted volcanic cinders and ashes, and are all included under the term tuff as used by English geologists.
Wiktionary
- adj. older and simplified spelling of tough
- n. geology A light porous rock, now especially a rock composed of compacted volcanic ash varying in size from fine sand to coarse gravel.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Min.) Same as tufa.
WordNet 3.0
- n. hard volcanic rock composed of compacted volcanic ash
Etymologies
- From French tuffe, tuf, from Italian tufo, from Latin tōfus. (Wiktionary)
- French tuf, from Old French, from Old Italian tufo, tufa; see tufa. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“To the hypocrite Christopher Dodd sitting there saying we are going to get tuff is hilarious.”
“Over time, that ash became a rock called tuff, which is anything but: tuff is soft, crumbly, and erodes easily.”
“Sometimes called tuff, it had often been used on Earth as construction material.”
“The volcano also spewed out hundreds of feet of ash as far as Kansas and Oklahoma and hardened into a honeycombed rock form called tuff.”
“Geological problems such as landslides, quicksand, cave-in were persistent through the entire process of construction, and we have built a 5,800-meter-long tunnel in a stratum known as tuff, a type of rock composed of compacted volcanic ash, which is the world's first of the kind," Shen said.”
“Yea, there's a lot of "tuff" teapootiers and wingnuts out there; until they break the law and get arrested and afraid Bubba is gonna be their cellmate.”
“The company insists that the "tuff" part of the name is well-earned for being waterproof, dustproof and you can drive a car over it.”
The Huffington Post: The Writers Workbench: CES 2010 -- Ohm on the Range
“Let me mention something else - "tuff" on crime Texas has over 2300 (yes, you read that right) separate felonies on their books, and every single one of them denies a person the right to own a gun forever.”
“PS -- since McCain's entire appeal rests on being "tuff", I can't imagine any woman, with the possible exception of Rice, who carries shall we say different baggage, being McCave's Veep pick.”
McCain Endorsed By Anti-Escalation Senators Snowe And Collins
“Appeals to fear, suggesting that foreign policy is all about being "tuff" is campaigning for McCain.”
New Hillary Ad Shows Bin Laden, Asks: "Who Do You Think Has What It Takes?"
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘tuff’.
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Visuals
A list of words which yield surprising, beautiful, amusing, or otherwise noteworthy images here on Wordnik.
photochrom, fufluns, thank you, cool l..., postcard, picture postcard, cricket, physiological ill..., Gakuryū Ishii, ametropia, One Froggy Evening, rhodopsin, Santiago Calatrava and 636 more...
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Volcanic Action
volcancellation, mofette, pozzuolana, puy, rapillo, solfatara, canagua, delabrated, efflagration, maccaluba, Plinian, salinelle and 46 more...
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Jamaican Glossary
The liner notes that accompany Papa San's dancehall album God & i include this thoughtful list of Jamaican-to-American translations, to aid in understanding what the heck he's saying in each song.
yah, yeh, yuy, woulda, wort, wid, wi, wes', wen, whey, wau, wanda and 151 more...
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Jamaican patois
"I and I plant the corn..."
i and i, rudeboy, ragamuffin, youth, dem, jamrock, jamden, fat 'matic, likkle, tuff, whe, inna and 132 more...
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The History of Cool
Words that mean "cool" around the world and through the ages.
cool, awesome, wild, stylin', groovy, neat, nifty, swell, great, tubular, radical, bitchin' and 188 more...
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looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1408 more...
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Geology Words
The descriptive science described.
earth, lithosphere, mineral, convection, heat flow, ore, deep time, fossil, formation, rock, tectonics, extinction and 281 more...
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To Learn
I need to learn and/or go over these words someday.
saccharine, chalumeau, elephantine, cerograph, tautology, galactagogue, woundwort, betony, sagination, endomorph, immiscible, kin and 17 more...
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the geologist
I like rocks. And all the names attributed to rocks and other geologic formations. Also see the earth list.
gneiss, breccia, granite, sedimentary, metamorphic, shale, igneous, geode, gabbro, lapillus, sandstone, limestone and 13 more...
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foamy swills
pounce, pumice, foam, spume, souffle, scoria, tuff, meerschaum, sinter, cinder, spumescent, grumous and 28 more...
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inamilaee's Words
erstwhile, sycophant, vernacular, vituperative, vitriol, vociferous, veracious, pernicious, idyllic, catatonic, catharsis, inchoate and 19 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for tuff.
knitandpurl "Soon they are standing before the fort's entrance, which is flanked by carvings of a pair of guards cut into the foamy volcanic tuff: halberd-brandishing Spaniards in blousy pants and conquistador helmets."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 121 of the Avon Books paperback edition Jan 26, 2013