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Buff   /bəf/   Listen
noun
Buff  n.  
1.
A sort of leather, prepared from the skin of the buffalo, dressed with oil, like chamois; also, the skins of oxen, elks, and other animals, dressed in like manner. "A suit of buff."
2.
The color of buff; a light yellow, shading toward pink, gray, or brown. "A visage rough, Deformed, unfeatured, and a skin of buff."
3.
A military coat, made of buff leather.
4.
(Med.) The grayish viscid substance constituting the buffy coat. See Buffy coat, under Buffy, a.
5.
(Mech.) A wheel covered with buff leather, and used in polishing cutlery, spoons, etc.
6.
The bare skin; as, to strip to the buff. (Colloq.) "To be in buff is equivalent to being naked."


Buff  n.  A buffet; a blow; obsolete except in the phrase "Blindman's buff." See blindman's buff. "Nathless so sore a buff to him it lent That made him reel."


adjective
Buff  adj.  
1.
Made of buff leather.
2.
Of the color of buff.
Buff coat, a close, military outer garment, with short sleeves, and laced tightly over the chest, made of buffalo skin, or other thick and elastic material, worn by soldiers in the 17th century as a defensive covering.
Buff jerkin, originally, a leather waistcoat; afterward, one of cloth of a buff color. (Obs.)
Buff stick (Mech.), a strip of wood covered with buff leather, used in polishing.


Buff  adj.  Firm; sturdy. "And for the good old cause stood buff, 'Gainst many a bitter kick and cuff."


verb
Buff  v. t.  To polish with a soft cloth, especially one similar to a buff 5. See Buff, n., 5.


Buff  v. t.  To strike. (Obs.)





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Buff" Quotes from Famous Books



... have borrowed the notion from The Spectator, No. 43, where Steele, after saying that the poet blundered because he was 'vivacious as well as stupid,' continues:—'A fool of a colder constitution would have staid to have flayed the Pict, and made buff of his skin for the wearing of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... imperial mantle, or whatever you imagine it to be, which I discern to be a garment of curses, and poisoned Nessus'-shirt now at last about to take fire upon you; you must strip that off your poor body, my friend; and, were it only in a soul's suit of Utilitarian buff, and such belief as that a big loaf is better than a small one, come forth into contact with your world, under true professions again, and not false. You wretched man, you ought to weep for half a century on discovering ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... for their admittance into the orders of Santiago and Calatrava. Their bearing would admit them, so unmistakably are they hidalgos. Their long hair, their turned-up moustaches, their pointed beards, their steel gorgets, their corselets or their buff doublets render them in advance ancestral portraits to hang up, with their arms blazoned on the corner of the canvas, in the galleries of old castles. No one has known so well as Velasquez how to paint the gentleman with such superb familiarity, and, so to speak, as equal to equal. He is by no ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... completed the inauspicious outline of the horseman's physiognomy. He had pistols in his holsters, and another pair peeped from his belt, though he had taken some pains to conceal them by buttoning his doublet. He wore a rusted steel head piece; a buff jacket of rather an antique cast; gloves, of which that for the right hand was covered with small scales of iron, like an ancient gauntlet; and a long broadsword completed ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... Saturate distillate with (a) Add ferric chloride solution. calcium chloride and distill over a few c.c. Brown colour acetic or formic acids. 5. Test distillate for butyric acid: Buff ppt. benzoic acid (see ether soluble acids). Add 3 c.c. alcohol and 4 drops concentrated sulphuric acid. (b) Add silver nitrate solution; then add one drop Smell of pineapple butyric ammonia ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre


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