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Puffer   /pˈəfər/   Listen
noun
Puffer  n.  
1.
One who puffs; one who praises with noisy or extravagant commendation.
2.
One who is employed by the owner or seller of goods sold at suction to bid up the price; a by-bidder.
3.
(Zool.)
(a)
Any plectognath fish which inflates its body, as the species of Tetrodon and Diodon of the family Tetraodontidae; called also blower, puff-fish, swellfish, and globefish. They are highly poisonous due to the presence of glands containing a potent toxin, tetrodotoxin. Nevertheless they are eaten as a delicacy in Japan, being prepared by specially licensed chefs who remove the poison glands.
(b)
The common, or harbor, porpoise.
4.
(Dyeing) A kier.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Puffer" Quotes from Famous Books



... fish—among them that constant delight of the landsman, the puffer, which, when disturbed, rapidly inflates itself, rising to the surface of the water until it becomes apparently so large a mouthful that its would-be devourer is fooled into believing the morsel too big ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... been paid in the United States, within a score of years, for patent medicines. It would buy up a kingdom of respectable dimensions. So eager is this health-hunger, that it bites at bare hooks. The "advertising man" of Arnold's Globules offers his services as nostrum-puffer-general, and appeals to past success as proof of his abilities in this line. But Arnold's Globules will sell no whit the worse. Is the amiable Mr. Knox right, after all? Doubtless, we answer, the American organization is more easily disordered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... of Chigwell School had prescribed in his deed of gift that the master should be "a good Poet, of a sound religion, neither Papal nor Puritan; of a good behaviour; of a sober and honest conversation; no tippler nor haunter of alehouses, no puffer of tobacco; and, above all, apt to teach and severe in his government." Here William studied Lilly's Latin and Cleonard's Greek Grammar, together with "cyphering and casting-up accounts," being a good scholar, we may guess, ...
— William Penn • George Hodges

... very dark, with thick black whiskers, and, for a number of years, has been a victim to the habit of opium smoking. He began very early. He takes this drug both in his lodgings, over the gate of the Cathedral, and in a den in East London, kept by a woman nicknamed "The Princess Puffer." This hag, we learn, has been a determined drunkard,—"I drank heaven's-hard,"—for sixteen years BEFORE she took to opium. If she has been dealing in opium for ten years (the exact period is not stated), she has been very ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang

... Selby was carried at once to his room and Dr. Puffer, the eminent surgeon was sent for. It was found that he was shot through the breast and through the abdomen. Other aid was summoned, but the wounds were mortal, and Col Selby expired in an hour, in pain, but his mind was clear to the last and he made a full ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner



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