buff
Of the color of buff leather, a brownish yellow.
Adjective
- Of the color of buff leather, a brownish yellow.
- Unusually muscular.
- The bouncer was a big, buff dude with tattoos, a shaved head, and a serious scowl.
Synonyms: buffed buffed out
- Physically attractive.
- That's right: I'm taking driver's ed next semester. Hiring an interpreter for CHS and the deaf school outta my own hefty pockets. You're welcome. Oh, and I'm going to get really skinny and buff. All slim like a swimsuit...
Origin
From buffe (“leather”), from Middle French buffle (“buffalo”).
Forms
Derived
Noun Entry 2
- Undyed leather from the skin of buffalo or similar animals.
- […]; but is in a ſuite of buffe […] - c. 1594 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Comedie of Errors”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
- A tool, often one covered with buff leather, used for polishing.
- A brownish yellow colour.
- 1693, John Dryden (translator), The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis Translated into English Verse, London: Jacob Tonson, Satire 10, lines 307-308, p. 203, […] a Visage rough, Deform’d, Unfeatur’d, and a Skin of Buff.
- His face changed from tan to buff. - 1929, Dashiell Hammett, chapter 24, in Red Harvest:
- A military coat made of buff leather.
- A diuell in an euerlaſting garment hath him ; / On whoſe hard heart is button’d vp with ſteele : / A Feind, a Fairie, pittileſſe and ruffe : / A Wolfe, nay worſe, a fellow all in buffe […] - c. 1594 (date written),...
- A person who is very interested in a particular subject.
- He’s a real history buff. He knows everything there is to know about the civil war.
Synonyms: enthusiast aficionado amateur admirer buff connoisseur devotee maniac fan fanatic fancier fancy fiend freak geek junkie partisan rooter zealot
- A change introduced in a patch that makes a character, item, or attack stronger.
Antonyms: nerf
- An effect that makes a character or item stronger.
- I just picked up an epic damage buff! Let's go gank the other team!
Synonyms: revamp
- Compressive coupler force that occurs during a slack bunched condition.
- The bare skin.
- to strip to the buff
- To be in buff, is equivalent to being naked. - 1880, Thomas Wright, “buff”, in Dictionary of obsolete and provincial English, containing words from the English writers previous to the nineteenth century which are no...
- Not to mention, nudity can be just plain convenient. “Laundry is minimal,” Schulte notes. It also doesn’t hurt that being in the buff spices up his workday. - 2021 October 18, Ian Lecklitzner, “The Inevitable Rise of...
- The greyish viscid substance constituting the buffy coat.
- Any substance used to dilute (street) drugs in order to increase profits.
- 2014, “Aldergrove’s 856 gang busted, $400,000 in drugs seized,” CBC News, 30 July, 2014, Police say this 20 ton hydraulic jack was used to press mixtures of cocaine and “buff” into brick.
Forms
Derived
buff-banded thicketbird buff-bellied pipit buff-breasted sandpiper buff coat buffery buffhood buffish buffism buff jerkin buff nor stye Buff Point buff-tailed bumblebee buffware buffy in the buff iron buff railbuff railway buff
Noun obsolete
- A strike; a blow.
- Nathless so sore a buff to him it lent / That made him reel. - 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 6:
- A man must consider what a blind-man’s-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect I anticipate your argument. - 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”, in Essays: First Series:
Origin
From Old French bufer (“to cuff, buffet”). See buffet (“a blow”).
Forms
Derived
Noun countable, informal
- A buffalo, or the meat of a buffalo.
- […] diced buff (buffalo) meat, usually heavily spiced […] - 2006, Bradley Mayhew, Joe Bindloss, Stan Armington, Nepal:
- You will eat water buffalo meat and drink boiled water buffalo milk: buff burgers at Aunt Jane's restaurant, buff mo-mos which are the Tibetan won-tons, and buff steaks at The Globe. - 1992, Marilyn Stablein, The Census...
Origin
Clipping of buffalo.
Forms
Noun alt of, alternative
- Alternative form of buffe (“face armor”).
- For they had helmets on their heads, fashioned like wild beast's necks, and strange beavers or buffs to the same, and wore on their helmets great high plumes of feathers, as they had been wings : […] - 1899, Selected...
Forms
Verb Entry 6
- To polish and make shiny by rubbing.
- He was already buffing the car's hubs.
- To make a character or an item stronger.
- The enchanter buffed the paladin to prepare him to fight the dragon.
- I noticed that the pistols were buffed in the update.
- To modify a medical chart, especially in a dishonest manner.
- "Sure thing, I buffed her, and they turfed her to urology, but she bounced back to me!" [...] They attempted to transfer her to urology by modifying her chart (buffing it) to request urine tests, but the doctors in...
- The implication of such an action is an invitation to buff the chart. The medical records department could have prevented the falsification by sending a copy of the chart to the attorney at the same time that they...
- To remove (graffiti), particularly when done by someone who is not a graffiti writer.
- To strip to the bare skin.
Forms
Derived
buffable buff down buff out buff the muffin buff up buff wheel rebuff unbuffed
Verb Entry 7
- To strike.
- Bravely run Red-hood, / There was a shock, / To have buff’d out the blood / From ought but a block. - a. 1640, Ben Jonson, The Under-wood, page 277:
Forms
Verb dialectal, obsolete
- To stammer, stutter
Origin
From Middle English buffen (“to stutter, stammer”), from Old English byffan (“to mumble, mutter”), from Proto-West Germanic *bubjaną, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeyH- (“to fear, to be afraid”). More at bive (“tremble, shake”) and bever.