fluff
/flʌf/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.20 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Fan fiction, or part of a fan fiction, which is sweet and feel-good in tone, usually involving romance.
Countable; Slang; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "[W]hen I walk in my fields I can see, down Berwick way, the little fluffs of white smoke which tell me of this strange new hundred-legged beast, with coals for food and a thousand men in its belly, for ever crawling over the border."
- "That article was basically a bunch of fluff. It didn't say anything substantive."
- "That New England-style salami and fluff sandwich sure hit the spot!"
- "And when something triggers, I can close the window and go read fluff for hours until I calm down."
- "Fans prefer fluff to other types of fic. But angst (dramatic stories where characters have a wide range of emotions, including...angsty ones) comes in close second."
- "Ah, fluff. My happy place. These fics are dedicated to feel-good feelings, which are the very best type of feelings."
Etymology
From earlier floow (“woolly substance, down, nap, lint”), also spelt flough, flue, and flew, from West Flemish vluwe, of uncertain ultimate origin: * Compare Old English flōh (“that which is flown off, fragment, piece”); see flaw * Possibly representing a blend of flue + puff; compare Middle Dutch vloe, or perhaps onomatopoeic; compare dialectal English floose, flooze, fleeze (“particles of wool or cotton; fluff; loose threads or fibres”), Danish fnug (“down, fluff”), Swedish fnugg (“speck, flake”). * Alternatively, West Flemish vluwe may derive from French velu (“hairy, furry”), from Latin villūtus (“having shaggy hair”), from villus (“shaggy hair, tuft of hair”). For words of similar sound and meaning in other languages, compare Japanese フワフワ (fuwafuwa, “lightly, softly”), Hungarian puha (“soft, fluffy”), Polish puchaty (“soft, fluffy”), Romanian puf (“down, peachfuzz, soft hair of some animals, powderpuff”).
Origin
- Source language: French
Word Breakdown
- Root: *h₂welh₁-, vluwe, velu, villūtus
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /flʌf/
- British English: /flʌf/