tuft
/tʌft/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.56 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A cluster of threads drawn tightly through upholstery, a mattress or a quilt, etc., to secure and strengthen the padding.
noun
A gold tassel on the cap worn by titled undergraduates at English universities.
Example Sentences
- "“Not far from this place, there is a tuft of about a dozen of tall beeches […].”"
- "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."
- "Several young tufts, and others of the faster men."
- "His tufted cottage rising through the snow"
- "They're never gonna get that Ottoman tufted in time!"
Etymology
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 tūfa (“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)”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: tuft, touffe, tūfa, *þūbǭ
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /tʌft/
- British English: /tʌft/