tuft

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A small clump of trees or bushes.

   “Not far from this place, there is a tuft of about a dozen of tall beeches […].”.

2. 2
   noun

   A person entitled to wear such a tassel.

   A college tutor, or a nobleman’s toady, who appears one fine day as my right reverend lord, in a silk apron and a shovel-hat, and assumes benedictory airs over me, is still the same man we remember at Oxbridge, when he was truckling to the tufts, and bullying the poor undergraduates in the lecture-room.

3. 3
   verb

   To provide or decorate with a tuft or tufts.

   His tufted cottage rising through the snow.

4. 4
   verb

   To secure and strengthen (a mattress, quilt, etc.) with tufts. This hinders the stuffing from moving.

   They're never gonna get that Ottoman tufted in time!

Simplified etymology

Tuft entered English in the late Middle English period from French tofe, whose earlier origin is unknown. It later became a name for a titled Oxford or Cambridge undergraduate because such students wore gold tassels on their caps, and this use may have given rise to toff.

From Middle English tuft, toft, tofte, an alteration of earlier *tuffe (> Modern English tuff), from Old French touffe, tuffe, toffe, tofe (“tuft”) (modern French touffe), from Late Latin tufa (“helmet crest”) (near Vegezio). Compare Old English þūf (“tuft”), Old Norse þúfa (“mound”), Swedish tuva (“tussock; grassy hillock”), Swedish tova (“tangled knot”), Swedish tofs (“tuft, tassel”), from Proto-Germanic *þūbǭ (“tube”), *þūbaz; akin to Latin tūber (“hump, swelling”), Ancient Greek τῡ́φη (tū́phē, “cattail (used to stuff beds)”).

Topics

External links

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• Cambridge Dictionary
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