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Fluff   Listen
noun
Fluff  n.  
1.
Nap or down; flue(2); soft, downy feathers.
2.
Hence: Anything light and downy, whose volume consists mostly of air, such as cotton or down.
3.
Something light and inconsequential; something not to be taken seriously; used commonly of literary or dramatic productions, and sometimes of people.
4.
A mistake, especially in the recitation of lines in a drama.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fluff" Quotes from Famous Books



... very strange to us, to see that in such a fertile Countrey which was as yet never inhabited, there should be notwithstanding such a free and clear passage to us, without the hinderance of Bushes, Thorns, and such like fluff, wherewith most Islands of the like nature are pestered: the length of the Grass (which yet was very much intermixt with flowers) being the only impediment that ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville

... by Caroline Darrah on the other side; he's savage when he's crossed. And tack in Payt opposite her. I invited Polly the Fluff for you—she is a dbutante and such a coo-child that she'll just suit ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess

... as she passed the uncarded heap, a folded paper which was lost amid the fluff. The sticks flew this way and that, and the twisted note shot up into the air with a bunch of wool which fell across the two sticks and was presently cast aside upon the carded heap. And peeping eyes from the barred windows of the ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... it smote April to the heart. She pressed her fingers over her eyes and tears oozed through them, trickling down her face. When at last she looked again the stars were gone and the sky was blue as a thrush's egg, with a fluff of rose-red clouds knitted together overhead and a few crimson rags scudding across the Qua-Quas. A dove suddenly cried, "Choo-coo, choo-coo," and others took up the refrain, until in the hills and woods hundreds ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... the cellar. Staring ahead of him he saw the slight figure of a woman silhouetted against the tender pearl of the evening sky, eyes staring affrightedly into the darkened door of a dugout, a fluff of yellow hair like a ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... quite 'torture' to me, with the family so close, across the street," I answered him, and I went on whipping the lace on a piece of fluff I am making, to discipline myself because I loathe a needle so. "Please don't you worry over me, dear." I raised my eyes to his and I tried the common citizenship look. It must have carried a little way for he flushed, the first ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... flew out quietly at somebody who was not there: "Uprightness? Knowledge of business, as that Philistine of an inspector says? I know why you're forcing your way in and insinuating yourself in here, you fluff-picker! Pretend to be as innocent as you like, I"—he made the gesture that meant: "I am one who know life and the species that wears long hair and aprons!" With this he turned toward the door, but his movement ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... Prof," I said. "This innocent looking piece of fluff was caught slipping a five-dollar bill to a teller at a bank down town, and asking for change for a hundred dollar bill. She says it was nothing more than sleight of hand. You are an experienced observer. I want you to watch her work her little trick. If she can fool us, and not use Psi, the legal ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett

... does not come out of its shell in another twenty-four hours, I will just leave it alone and teach the rest of them to swim properly and to find their own food. I really can't be expected to do two things at once.' And with a fluff of her feathers she pushed the egg into the middle of ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... dog when I bought him, but just a little ball of orange-tawny fluff that I could carry with one arm. He cost me all the money I had saved up for a holiday trip to Passy. I had seen his father, a champion St. Bernard, at a dog-show, and felt that life would be well worth living with such a companion; but his price was five hundred guineas. ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... of the sea with as little ado as he had entered. On the end of his spear twisted a fish. His fur, slicked flat to his strongly muscled body, began to dry in the air and fluff out while the sun awoke prismatic lights on the scales which covered his hands and feet. He dispatched the fish and cleaned it neatly, tossing the offal back into the water, where some shadowy things arose to tear ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... your own way. We will assume for the sake of security that Maynard is a spy, that he has no dead mother whom he wants leave to bury, and that he has sold his country for the sake of some bit of fluff in Plymouth. The point is: what am I to do? Shall I ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... wolf bore Henry even farther back than the voice of the owl, and his preternaturally acute senses took on an edge which the modern man never knows in his civilized state. He heard the fluff of the owl's feathers as it moved and the panting of the wolves in the valley below. Then he saw the leader walk from the low mound and take a slow and deliberate course along the slope, with the others following in single file like Indians. The king was leading them nearer to the rocky hollow, ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... told the boys. Curving one hand into an imitation nest holding an imaginary egg, he hovered over it with the other hand, rubbing it gently, explaining to the boys, who watched him with absorbing interest, how the egg would change to a beautiful fluff of feathers and music, and after a while would fly away among the trees and fill the woods with sweet sounds. "If you destroy the egg, you kill all that beauty and music, and there will be no little bird to sit on ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... fire, and had laid his forehead against the mantelpiece (which it is a low one, and brought him into the attitude of leap-frog), and had heaved a tremenjous sigh. His hair was long and lightish; and when he laid his forehead against the mantelpiece, his hair all fell in a dusty fluff together over his eyes; and when he now turned round and lifted up his head again, it all fell in a dusty fluff together over his ears. This give him a wild appearance, similar to ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens

... straight." You have put your love of beauty, your restrained love for color, and your exceptional sense of balance into the whole establishment. It is a man's house—things are made for use; the chairs will stand weight; the couches are not fluff; one can lean with safety on the tables. But everywhere the eye is satisfied. My bed is beautiful, French I fancy, yet it is comfort itself. The lamp beside my bed is a dull bit of bronze which does not poke itself into your sleepy eye, yet you know that ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... named Teddy lives in the same house with Fluff, an Angora cat of great beauty. Teddy has been carefully taught, and his manners are delightful. Often when passing the chair where Fluff lies asleep, Teddy will put up his black nose and give her face a friendly lap. Fluff stretches out her ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy

... afterward, when the letter was an indistinguishable fluff of white ash in the fireplace, that it occurred to him that it had no satirical intent whatever and that the purpose of it had been, quite simply, what it had pretended to be; namely, to reassure him and put an end to ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... of loose cotton; and the worker twangs the string with the mallet and then draws the mallet across the string, each three or four times. The string strikes a small portion of the cotton, the fibre of which is scattered by the impact and thrown off in a uniform condition of soft fluff, all dirt being at the same time removed. This is the operation technically known as teasing. Buchanan remarked that women frequently did the work themselves at home, using a smaller kind of bow called ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... you," she said, "I can never forget." Then she sank back among the white fluff of lace and fur. "I only learned this morning," she went on, after a minute, " who sat beside me all that night and bathed my arm, and gave ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... gym. clothes, picks out a set of kid pillows, and had just stepped out on the rubber for a little warmin' up, when in sails a fluff delegation. There was a fat old one, that looked as though she might be mother; a slim baby-eyed one, that any piker would have played for sister; and another, that I couldn't place at all. She wasn't a Fifth-ave. girl—you could tell that by the way she wore her hair bunched down on ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... guard gently extracted a bit of pointed wood and fluff from a fold of Brion's pants. He cracked open the car door, and just ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... has that absolute transparency, that distance and clearness which follows a great fall of rain; but a thick pall, still heavy with moisture, remains suspended over all, and on the foliage of the hanging woods still float great flakes of gray fluff, which remain there, motionless. In the foreground, in front of and below this almost fantastic landscape, is a miniature garden where two beautiful white cats are taking the air, amusing themselves by ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... hand behind his shoulder to urge Mariane to resistance: this time he catches her; but just as he swings his shoulder to give her the promised blow, she stops him by changing the intent of her gesture, and carefully picking from the top of his sleeve a bit of fluff which she holds carefully between her fingers, then blows into the air, and watches intently as it floats away. Orgon is paralysed by her innocence of expression, and compelled to hide his rage.—Regnier, ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere

... his head still bowed, and his free hand picking imaginary atoms of fluff from his trousers, "that if you tell me the truth, our two heads may make some progress. If you deliberately mislead me, although the task will even then not be beyond the wit of man, it will ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... the cook drank fast enough; Down went the drink out of the gourd, FLUFF, FLUFF: Alas! the man had had enough before: And then, betwixt a trumpet and a snore, His nose said something,—grace for what he had; And of that drink the cook ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... that was!" Beth observed. "Did you notice the sea? It was the sort of sea that might make one long to be a crab to live in it. Though a crab is not the animal that I should specially choose to be. I long to be a cat sometimes. To be able to fluff out my fur and spit would be such a satisfaction. There are feelings that can be expressed in no other way. And then to be able to purr! Purring is the one sound in nature that expresses perfect comfort and content, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... might not be another cousin of whom he had never heard. The women doctors and nurses at home wore stout shoes and had pockets let in at the seams of their frocks, useful, doubtless, but with an unlovely tendency to yawn and show their contents. This girl was a mere fluff of pale yellow organdie which brought out the purplish lights in ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... assured a soft, comfortable, cosy resting place, especially in winter. There were no springs. The flock bed so often mentioned was less downy but comfortable, being filled with bits of wool, rags, milkweed or cattail-fluff, the latter in abundant growth near the fresh waterways. This was the "next best bed" which was a sufficiently important item to be left to heirs. Thomas Gibson, in 1652, bequeathed to his daughter his "best ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester

... lass it wor thowt to be quite enuff if one wor plainly an respectably donned, an if they had onny pride, it wor to know at ther underclooas wor cleean an sweet an fit to be seen, but nah it's all top finery an fluff they think abaat; but if they'd darn ther stockins an wesh ther shifts a bit ofter, asteead o' wantin to spooart new gaons an hats ivvery few days it ud seem em better. ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley

... a lace collar, she flew to the mirror to put it on. Her hair dissatisfied her, and she made it fluff out a little under the rich braid which crowned her brow. Finally, she ruthlessly tore a rose from her new hat and pinned it to her girdle as she had seen ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner

... a sort of acquiescence, and then asked me for the loan of a white tie. I should have loved to give him a bowstring instead, with somebody who knew how to operate it. He was a fluff, that fellow—a tarnation fluff! ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various

... world—that I went down to the office of my paper and asked for three days' leave of absence from Mr. McArdle, who still presided over our news department. The good old Scotchman shook his head, scratched his dwindling fringe of ruddy fluff, and finally put his ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Mademoiselle," answered Susette, as she slipped the silky fluff over the Violet's head, and fastened the one or two hooks that held it in place over the filmy undergarments in which the Violet stood waiting for its veiling. "Mon Dieu, what a beauty it gives you, and that placing ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess

... companions in Janot's atelier. Of the rest I only remember one—poor Cazalet. He wore a self-tailored grotesque attire, a brown stuff tunic girt at the waist by a leathern belt, shapeless trousers of the same material, and sandals. He had long yellow hair and untrimmed chicken fluff grew casually about his face. A sombre genius, he used to paint dark writhing horrors of souls in pain, and in his hours of relaxation to drink litres of anisette. At first he disliked and scoffed at me because I was an Englishman, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... continued, catching hold of what would have been the Dodo's ear if he had had one, but which was in reality a sort of woolly fluff growing all ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow

... Princess, and waited for nightfall; then, when the Princess had fallen asleep, it crept up on to her bed, and gnawed a hole in the pillow, through which it dragged one by one little down feathers, and threw them under the Princess's nose. And the fluff flew into the Princess's nose, and into her mouth, and starting up she sneezed and coughed, and the ring fell out of her mouth on to the coverlet. In a flash the tiny mouse had seized it, and brought it to Waska as a ransom for the King of the Mice. Thereupon Waska ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various

... "Fluff and puff! what does that matter?" says Manuel. "There is no law against a widow's remarrying forthwith: and widows are quickly made by any champion about whom the wise Norns are already talking. But I must not tell you about that, Niafer, because I do not wish to ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... distant field; he had started off directly after dinner. Priscilla was ready for her adventure. With the natural desire of youth, she had decked herself out in her modest finery—a stiffly starched white gown of a cheap but pretty design, a fluff of soft lace at throat and wrist, and, over it, the old red cape that years before had added to her appearance as she danced on the rocks. Perhaps remembering that, she had utilized the garment and was thankful that cloth ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... an endurable level now. Another pretty little bit of fluff. He smiled shakily. "Sit down, sweet. I'm sorry. My nerves are ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson

... large mirror, and in front of this she laboured patiently for a full ten minutes, twisting her hair this way and that, and using the comb and brush vigorously. Now and then, as she worked, she became aware that a fluff of hair rolling down low over her forehead did amazing things to her face and brought her from Sally Fortune into the strange dignity of a "lady." But she could not complete any of the manoeuvres, no matter how promisingly they started. In the end she dashed a handful of hairpins on ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... her. She was from Rhode Island and visiting May Strudwick, who told her for mercy's sake not to pay any attention to speeches of that sort and to hold on to the Rhode-Islander, for Mr. Burke said the same fluff to all the girls who came to Twickenham, and as long as it was just eyebrows and things of that kind no harm was done. But she couldn't understand and went home sooner than she expected. I understand. It's lots of fun—the different ways of saying the same thing—and ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher

... great warm hand when it was holding mine so lovingly, and how I could have kissed every seam and scar upon it. But by and by his hands shall be white like Tom's, though not so soft. I hate a hand which feels like a fluff of cotton. He shall not live here, for Harold could never get along with mother and Tom; but we will build a house together, Hally and I, with Jerrie to help and plan—build one where the cottage stands, or near it, so Jerrie can still see the old Tramp ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... came round. Talking was forbidden in the great room, and the girls went on with their mechanical employment, turning out long seam after long seam of delicate stitches. The fluff from the work seemed to smother Connie that morning. She had inherited her mother's delicacy. She coughed once or twice. There was a longing within her to get away from this dismal, this unhealthy ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade

... stooped also, and gently poked the red cradle with her finger; for the tiny mice were nestling deeper into the fluff with small squeals of alarm. Suddenly she cried out: "Boys, boys, I've found the thief! Look here; pull out these bits and see if they won't make up my ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott

... her in all directions. A poodle, two fox terriers, a toy Spitz, and a cat and kitten, had all been sleeping in the nooks her outline makes. They all barked in different keys, and between saying, "Down, Hector!" "Quiet, Fluff!" "Hush, hush, Fanny!" "Did um know it was a stranger?" etc., etc., she got in that she was glad to see me, and hoped you were better. When she stands up she is colossal! Her body dressed in the last fashion, and then the queerest ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn

... the A.D.'s nickel on a cross-town car and got back to the little Square. There was another organ-grinder there grinding out coon-songs, to which other piccaninnies danced. But nary a little white bundle of fluff caught hold of my hand. I walked that Square till my feet were sore. It was hot. My throat was parched. I was hungry. My head ached. I was hopeless. And yet I just couldn't give it up. I had asked so many children and nurse-maids whether they'd heard of the baby lost ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson

... Rae Malgregor dropped the fluff of lace and ribbons into Zillah's lap and reached out with cheerful voraciousness to annex the young man's picture to her somewhat bleak possessions. "Oh, I don't care a rap who he is," she interrupted ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... pili, cilia, villi; lovelock; beaucatcher^; curl paper; goatee; papillote, scalp lock. plumage, plumosity^; plume, panache, crest; feather, tuft, fringe, toupee. wool, velvet, plush, nap, pile, floss, fur, down; byssus^, moss, bur; fluff. knot (convolution) 248. V. be rough &c adj.; go against the grain. render-rough &c adj.; roughen, ruffle, crisp, crumple, corrugate, set on edge, stroke the wrong way, rumple. Adj. rough, uneven, scabrous, scaly, knotted; rugged, rugose^, rugous^; knurly^; asperous^, crisp, salebrous^, gnarled, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... bare his Soul to the Head of the Firm. This revered Fluff should have been known as ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... rather absurd," he said, in a conversational way, as we went to the next tee, "that putting should be so ridiculously important. Take that hole, for instance. I get on the green in a perfect three; you fluff your drive completely and get on ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne

... it escaped him, fluff and feathers flying in the effort, and squawking, plunging, and fluttering, made wildly for the darkest corner of the stage, just as Lettice ran on the mechanical mouse ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... peevish fluff That goggles from a lady's muff Art thou, my Towser. In the Park Thy form occasions no remark Unless it be a friendly call From soldiers walking in the Mall, Or the impertinence of pugs Stretched at their ease on carriage rugs. For thou art sturdy and thy fur Is rougher than ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various

... of beauty finds delight in these mountains from the first daintiness of spring on through the glorious blaze of wonder that is fall in the Blue Ridge. Beginning with the tan fluff of the beeches, the red flowering of maples, the feathery white blooms of the "sarvis," on through the redbud's gaiety and the white dogwood's stark purity, all is loveliness. The enchantment continues in the flame of azaleas, which ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... letters—her morning's mail: many bore foreign postmarks, and not a few were emblazoned with rampant crests sunk in little dabs of colored wax. She wore a morning gown of soft white flannel belted in at the waist. Covering her head and wound loosely about her throat was a fluff of transparent silk, half- concealing the two nests of little gray and brown knots impaled on hair-pins. These were the chrysalides of those gay butterfly side-curls which framed her sweet face at night and to which she never gave wing until after luncheon, no matter who called. The silk scarf ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... like a little wind. Under her arm she held a distaff of dark, ripe wood, just a straight stick with a clutch at the end, like a grasp of brown fingers full of a fluff of blackish, rusty fleece, held up near her shoulder. And her fingers were plucking spontaneously at the strands of wool drawn down from it. And hanging near her feet, spinning round upon a black thread, spinning busily, like a thing in a gay wind, was her shuttle, her bobbin wound fat ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence

... Prince Albert fellow lets his idea run away with him. It makes elegant reading, but it don't say nothing. I'd never go out and buy Prince Albert Tobacco after reading it, because it doesn't tell me anything about the stuff. It's just a bunch of fluff." ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... to its meetings armed with musket and cutlass. Their tribunal was, of course, that of Judge Lynch. They arrested certain of the most unbearable offenders, tarred and feathered them, and drummed them out of the township. When feathers were lacking for the decoration, the white fluff of the native bullrush made a handy substitute. In the absence of a gaol, the Vigilants were known to keep a culprit in duress by shutting him up for the night in a sea-chest, ventilated by ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... shows unbounded interest in everything. Every sound and every fresh sight arouses him instantly; his crest comes up, his feathers fluff out, and he is on tiptoe to see what will come next. He is remarkably discriminating among people, and takes violent likes and dislikes on the instant. Some persons, without any reason that I can ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller

... library, and he had even heard suggestions as to the advisability of making him superintendent and displacing the present incumbent, who was superannuated. Sometimes in church Anderson had glanced keenly from under the quiet droop of languid lids at the Carrolls sitting in their gay fluff and flutter of silks and muslins and laces, and wondered, especially concerning Mrs. Carroll and her sister-in-law. It seemed almost inconceivable that they were ignorant, and if not, how entirely innocent! And then the expressions of their pretty, childish faces disarmed him as they ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... guilty," Lettice answered, smiling a little. "I have left my fair Persian, Fluff, in the care of my maid, Milly, who is to bring her to London as soon as I can get into ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... approvingly. "Now then, the first thing to do is to make the mother go back into the coop. Here, Mrs. Biddy, take a bit of this nice corn." He flung out a kernel or two to the hen, whose feathers that had started up in a ruffle and fluff, at sight of Joel, now drooped, and her excited ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney

... let her hand linger up at his cheek, head still back against him, so that, inclining his head, he could rest his lips in the ash-blond fluff of her hair. ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... is finished for your occupancy, the disintegrating forces will have made a raid upon the material of which it is constructed. Take notice of the signs of decomposition going on in everything around you—the accumulation of fluff in your rooms, in the innermost of your garments, along the seams. So also do the rocks and mountains yield themselves to dust, and so does all the planet reverberate with the resistless onward march of the law of progress, unfoldment, evolution from ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield

... The strong light from the window threw her head into shadow; only the slight fluff of her hair glistened in the light. This made an aureole which framed the ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... him a great courtesy, making her dress balloon out about her; then she clasped her hands at her throat, her chin resting on the fluff of her white undersleeves, and looked up at him with a delighted laugh. "We are not very old, either of us; I am thirty-three and you are only forty-six—I call that young. Oh, Lloyd, I was so low- spirited this morning; and ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... the bed," she announced cheerfully, "making a noise like a piece of fluff in order to ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... face of the moon looked down and made the shadows of the trees and the forest grow deeper and darker. Now and then I heard, when all was still, from his nesting-place, the brave yet delicate notes of the song sparrow, singing in his dreams from out a happy, overflowing heart. Dear little fluff of feathers! ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... she fell on her knees with her arms outstretched to the rampaging ball of white fluff and high spirits, the which thinking it some new game squatted back on its hind legs with the front ones wide apart, gave an infantile squeak, and whizzed round three times apparently for luck, as tears welled up in the child's large eyes and ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... fazzoletti—it would be so interesting afterwards, she thought—while the Senator exerted himself in the way of cheerful conversation, but it was very discouraging. Even when we dined at the fashionable open air restaurant in the Cascine, with no less a person than Ouida, in a fluff of grey hair and black lace, at the next table, and the most distinguished gambler of the Italian aristocracy presenting a narrow back to us from the other side, he permitted poppa to compare the quality of the beef fillets unfavourably with those of New York in silence, and ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... your Hog clean scoured, then fluff them with beaten Spice and sliced Dates, sweet herbs, a little Salt, Rosewater, Sugar, and two or three Eggs to make it slide; so fill them, tie them up like Puddings and boil them; when they are enough ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley

... that all his dainty jeers about middle-class denseness were beside the mark; all the complacent mockery concerning the deceased wife's sister and the rest, was of no use. If you see a man walking right into a deadly quicksand, you do not content yourself with informing him that a bit of fluff has stuck to his coat. Mr. Arnold should have gone among the lower middle-class a trifle more instead of trusting to his superfine imagination, and then he might have got to know whither our poor, stupid folks are tending. I have just ended an ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... the rooms had been pulled down, and where, decorated with ivy, the old spout formed a home for the snoring owls. By the aid of the long pole he brought out a young one to our view—a shy, soft, lovely, shadow-tinted creature, ghostly enough to behold, who felt like an impalpable mass of fluff, utterly refused to be kissed, and went savagely blinking back into his spout at the earliest possible opportunity. His snoring alarmed us ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... let me take off your hat. Shall I ring for Jeanne? No," as she saw the frightened look come into the eyes, "perhaps you'd rather be with me just at first. How pretty your hair is, so soft and fluffy. You must blue it, it is so white. I wish my hair would fluff, but it won't curl except in wet weather. Now come into the other room and sit down in that soft chair. Isn't that an easy chair? I picked that out too. I chose everything in the room, and I'm so proud of it. See, here is the footstool that goes with it, and you sit by the ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper

... ways. She made a simpleton of herself over those poodles. Each one had a high chair at the table, and a plate, and they always sat in these chairs and had meals with her, and the servants all called them Master Bijou, and Master Tot, and Miss Tiny, and Miss Fluff. One day they tried to make me sit in a chair, and I got cross and bit Mrs. Tibbett, and she beat me cruelly, and her servants stoned me away ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders

... walked rapidly across the room. She had made what in the light of recent events was a startling discovery. At first she had imagined that the long silken fluff was attached to one of the rings, but this her quick eyes had proved to be a mistake. On one of the slim fingers of the Countess was a ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... as "German lined"—a highly absorbent, closely woven paper, having an even surface and no loose "fluff" to adhere to the specimens—is the ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... hatching out broods under the floor or in the stable loft, and the plaintive cheep-cheep! of the "weedies" added its note to the chorus of sounds as the children followed them about, now and then catching up a ball of fluff to pet it, undeterred by indignant clucks from ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... encouraged to go on I point with pride On the other hand (with gesture) I hold The vox populi Be that as it may I shall not detain you As the hour is growing late Believe me We view with alarm As I was about to tell you The happiest day of my life It falls to my lot I can say no more In the fluff and bloom I can only hint I can say nothing I cannot find words The fact is To my mind I cannot sufficiently do justice I fear All I can say is I shall not inflict a speech on you Far be it from me Rise phoenix-like from his ashes But alas! What more can I say? At this late ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser

... rarely two. The chicks, which are hatched in January, are fed on the nest by the parent birds for almost seven months before they take to the sea and fend for themselves. Up to four months of age the chicks are beautiful white masses of downy fluff, but when we arrived on the scene their plumage was almost complete. Very often one of the parent birds was on guard near the nest. We did not enjoy attacking these birds, but our hunger knew no law. They tasted ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... you, Betty; go fluff and rose up a bit," he commanded, as he seated himself on the front steps with a determination which was as business-like as his management of the Electric ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess

... the doorway a moment or so later. He was younger than his two companions, younger and more tidy. His coat was also blue, and he wore a forage cap pulled down over hair very fair in the firelight. There was a fluff of young beard on his chin, and he carried himself with the stance of a ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... the hat. First Daddy saw two bright eyes. Then he saw Snowball all curled up in the hat. By her side were two little baby kittens. They were just like their mother. We named them Fluff and Muff. Now we have ...
— Five Little Friends • Sherred Willcox Adams

... only twenty-four, and although Joe was thirty-six he looked years younger. They could grow. Now she began asking him to read aloud in the evenings, nor was the reading all "mere fluff." Though she picked out amusing things to vary the monotony, she insisted on magazines and books which had been recommended by the little history "prof" at home, to whom Ethel wrote long letters. The books rather ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole

... are the owls, and very wicked and ferocious some of them look. There is the long-eared owl, with his bent-in, short, hooked nose and funny feathered ears standing straight up. The little owls are balls of soft fluff, and are eagerly looking at the dead mouse that father owl has brought for them to eat. They have a very rough nest, merely a platform of pine-twigs thrown together in the fork of a fir-tree; but they are hardy little birds, and do not mind that at all. Close by is a monster owl, called the ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... shepherd within it, had the dignity and beauty of some monumental tomb and carved effigy in old Greyfriars kirkyard. Only less strange was the contrast between the marks of poverty and toil on the dead man and the dainty grace of the little fluff of a dog ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson

... To fluff out her curls, put on fashionable dresses, and sing romantic songs to fascinate her husband would have seemed as strange as to adorn herself to attract herself. To adorn herself for others might perhaps have been agreeable—she did not know—but she had no time at all for ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... spade-guinea remained in the dust of the floor for a week or two, till it pleased the housemaid to move the dressing-table to brush away the accumulation, when she found the shining one in the fluff. ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... coast was clear, I returned to the library with my heart beating and shut the door. Peter had disentangled himself from the sofa and was taking fluff off his coat with an air of happy disengagement; I told him with emphasis that I was done for, that my name would be ringing in the police news next day and that I was quite sure by the inspector's face that ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith

... enrich and purify the blood is because they contain a larger percentage of iron than any other fruit. It is a shame ever to embarrass and humiliate the luscious things by imprisoning them in the indigestible layers of a shortcake. A fluff of pure powdered sugar and a dash of whipped cream and you have a toothsome dish fit for the most finicky god that ever ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans

... roar, a fluff of bluish light, and the great square tower rocked and trembled from its very foundations, swaying this way and that like a reed in the wind. Amazed and dizzy, the defenders, clutching at the cracking parapets for support, saw great stones, burning beams ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... around the grounds with me, at sunset," she explained, in intervals of cajoling the grumpy mass of fluff to descend. "And he ran ahead of me, to-day, to the edge of the path. That must have been when ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... I felt both my hunger and a dropping weariness. I had no thought of entering any house, but as I passed by one open porte-cochere, something, I know not what, made me turn sharply in, for my mind had become as fluff on the winds, not working of its own action, but the sport of impulses that seemed external. I went across the yard, and ascended a wooden spiral stair by a twilight which just enabled me to pick my way among five or six vague forms fallen there. In that confined ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... three of us sat down in the shade of a "bouillard," a sort of poplar with a white bark, which grows on the banks of the Danube and the Loire (probably on those of other large rivers), and sheds, in the spring of the year, a white and silky fluff, the covering of its flower. The countess had recovered her august serenity; she half regretted the unveiling of her griefs, and mourned that she had cried aloud like Job, instead of weeping like the Magdalen,—a Magdalen without loves, or galas, or prodigalities, ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... off the flapper stuff; What's fit for Pholoe, a fluff, Is not for Ibycus's wife— A woman at ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams

... sacrifice for such a master was nothing at all. He lingered, glancing now and again at the heap of correspondence that would occupy them next morning, and sorting once more the little pile that would need immediate personal attention. He was picking a bit of disfiguring fluff from his coat sleeve when the door opened and ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... am about to give of preparing breast of mutton was told me by a Welsh lady of rank, at whose table I ate it (it appeared as a side dish), and who said, half laughingly, "Will you take some 'fluff'? We are very fond of it, but breast of mutton is such a despised dish I never expect any one else to like it." I took it, on my principle of trying everything, and did find it very good. This lady told me that, having of course ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen

... Lamb, regarding whose cuticular The fluff exterior was white and kinked in each particular. On each occasion when the lass was seen perambulating, The little quadruped likewise was ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... A large brown circle like a bruise was strongly marked beneath his eyes, He seemed to be at least sixty years old. His hands were white and clean. His boots were trodden down at the heels, and full of holes. A pair of blue trousers, mended in various places, were covered with a species of fluff which made them offensive to the eye. Whether it was that his damp clothes exhaled a fetid odor, or that he had in his normal condition the "poor smell" which belongs to Parisian tenements, just as offices, sacristies, and hospitals have their own peculiar and rancid fetidness, ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... springing from the step as lightly as a dandelion fluff before I could scramble down on the ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... Naginlta's eyes regarded him knowingly. Travis signaled with his hand and thought out what would be the coyotes' part in this surprise attack. The prick-eared silhouette vanished. Uphill the chitter of a fluff-fur sounded twice—Tsoay was ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton

... the floor those bits of fluff which come from goodness knows where in the best regulated houses. Mabel, very hungry and exasperated at the long absence of the others at their breakfast, could not forbear to whisper suddenly ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit

... reply; and from just on the other side of a pile of merchandise that reached to the ceiling Hilary could hear some one blowing at the tindery fluff made by lighting the top of a ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn

... they had five or six little hens looking admiringly at their every movement. At such times they would dance and hop with great delight; and the little hens, in a circle round them, watched their hops and steps with absorbed interest. Immensely pleased with himself, the young dancer would fluff out his feathers, so as to look as big as possible, and after strutting about, would suddenly shoot out a leg and a wing, first on one side and then on the other, then spring high into the air, and do a sort of step dance when his feet touched ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... was anybody like you in the world," she breathed, flicking away some fluff from her breast. She seemed to be regarding him, not as a benefactor, but as ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... daughter's eye for dust, dirt and cobwebs. You will find, unless she is a phenomenal exception to the majority of young people, that she will not see when the soap-cup needs washing, or that there are finger-smears on the doors, and "fluff" in the corners. But with the blessed mother-gift of patience, point out to her, again and again, the seemingly small details, the "hall-marks" of housewifery, which, heeded, make the thrifty, neat housekeeper, and, when neglected, the slattern. As she grows older, let her straighten the ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... "Madame n'est pas fatiguee?" And Madame would answer: "No. Speak English, Augustine—Polly will pick up your French! Come here!" And, reaching up a pale hand, she would set straight a stray fluff of the girl's dark-brown hair or improve the set of ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... Mike, snipping a piece of fluff off his judgeship's shoulder. "There's a white-bearded old guy, two or three swell gents with tall hats, Counselor Tutt and an attorney named Chippingham, besides that pretty Miss Wiggin; and they ain't speakin' ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... in the hammock; and on and on I droned and droned through the rhythmic stuff— But with always a half of my vision gone Over the top of the page—enough To caressingly gaze at you, swathed in the fluff Of your hair ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... leaned forward and rubbed a hardly perceptible atom of fluff off his left trouser leg just ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... been serviceable to Rob ere now;—forbye a set o' pearlins I sent yourself when ye was gaun to be married, and when Rob was an honest weel-doing drover, and nane o' this unlawfu' wark, wi' fighting, and flashes, and fluff-gibs, disturbing the king's ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... are burnt off; with gas all the loose fibres are burnt off. This is brought about by the gas flame passing straight through the cloth. It is not necessary to describe the gas singeing machine in detail. Singeing machines should be kept scrupulously clean and free from fluff, which is liable to collect round them, and very liable to fire. Some machines are fitted with a flue having a powerful draught which carries off this fluff, away from any ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech

... dog, with frenzied mien, Was chasing Fluff, the mouser, When, poof! the rocket flashed ...
— The Rocket Book • Peter Newell

... come out of the kowhai flowers. They are the prettiest little things—fair as lilies with golden ringlets, and little golden peaked caps, bent over like a horn upon their heads. I don't think they wear anything else much, just an odd little fluff of green here and there, like stray feathers that have ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke

... the fancy sets your blood to bubbling and your pulse to swinging in rhythm with the long surges that leap about Minot's and froth white over Chest ledge and the Willies, that come on to drown the inner Osher rocks in exultant whirlpools and fluff the loose stones of the beach into a foam that ripples over the breakwater into the road that ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... cyclone from a third—such an aeolian purgatory was never let loose in my sight before, but Jupiter, gauging each and all, fired his ball from the cannon, and it sped on, buffeted here and there, now up, now down, like a bit of fluff in the chance zephyrs of the spring-tide, but ultimately passing through the hole in the target, and landing gently in a basket immediately behind the bull's-eye. The winds immediately died down, and all ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs

... rollicking laugh. "What, uncle," he said, "little Ida McIntosh? Marry that little yellow-haired fluff ball, that ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... in place of a jacket and hat. A colored cotton apron covers her skirt below the waist, and the short skirt displays stout stockings similar to Sarah's. She wears clogs, and the clothes—except the shawl—are covered with ends of cotton and cotton-wool fluff. Even her hair has not escaped. A pair of scissors hangs by a ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... said Tom; and two more drawers were carried over. Then the framework and desk were fetched, with Mrs Fidler standing ready, dustpan and brush in hand, to remove any dirt and fluff that ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... you hear the explosion, the whole house simply lifts up into the air, apparently quite silently; then you hear the roar, and the whole earth shakes. In the place where the house was there is a huge fountain-spout of what looks like pink fluff. It is the pulverized bricks. Then a monstrous shoot of black smoke towering up a hundred feet or more, and, finally, there is a curious willow-like formation, and then—you duck, as huge pieces of shell, and house, and earth, and haystack tumble over your ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... ought to have all the beauty there is, and I feel that a man who has any is in some way dishonest, but I never before saw anything like that person who had come out of the woods to the rescue of my family fortune, and I simply stared at him as he stood with a fluff of seething white wings around his feet and towered against the green gray of an old tree that hung over the side of the road. He was tall and broad, but lithe and lovely like some kind of a woods thing, and heavy hair of the same brilliant burnished ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... and not merely to the sound of her voice. She appealed to Elliott for corroboration on this point and Elliott grew almost interested trying to decide whether or not Chanticleer knew he was "Chanticleer" and not "Sunflower." There were also "Fluff" and "Scratch" and "Lady Gay" and "Ruby Crown" and "Marshal Haig" and "General Petain" and many more, besides "Brevity," so named because, as Priscilla solicitously explained, she never seemed to grow. They all, with the exception of Brevity, looked ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist

... and Resplendent Majesty, Queen Zixi of Ix! His Serene and Tremendous Majesty, King Bud of Noland. Her Royal Highness, the Princess Fluff." ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum

... was still. The flakes were not yet falling heavily and they lay on the hard crust of snow as light as silk fluff. What might be coming down in another hour from the darkness overhead, however, could not be foretold, while if both a gale and a great fall of snow occurred the labour of the night ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd

... kitten and I thought you might like him," he said awkwardly, holding out a little bundle of gray fluff. ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin

... knows how to keep things humming with a minimum of stress. We don't have world wars now because we work off our pugnacity by sailing into gym sluggers eight or ten times a week. And since our romantic emotions can be taken care of by tactile television we're not at the mercy of every brainless bit of fluff's calculated ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long

... for money; All work is at an end; It seems extremely funny There's any cash to spend; Yet still the tide of laces, The foam of fluff and silk Comes round in cardboard cases To lots of people's places ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various

... struggled. but not wildly, for a few seconds and then remained passive with bright eyes glinting in the gloom. She was a dusky little creature, the primaries, the back of the head, neck, the shoulders, and tail being black, but when the wings were extended the grey fluff of the base of the tail was conspicuous. After a few minutes I put her back on the nest, and she clung, to it having no shyness or fear. I noticed that the beak was very short, the gape very large, the legs dwarfed, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... escaped if it could, for it had in mind the dark, warm, familiar corner in Li's kitchen where no harm ever came near, but the agile hands of Joan caught him; he was swept into her arms. That little wail of helpless pain, the soft fluff of fur against her cheek, wiped all other things from Joan's mind. Out the window and across the gloomy hills she had been staring at the picture of the cave, and bright-eyed Satan, and the shadowy form of Bart, and the swift, gentle hand of Daddy Dan; but the cry of the puppy ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand

... figure lay in the golden sunlight, translucent, like an angel carved in alabaster. But on the shoulder-blades lay shadow, deep shadow—no, not shadow, a fluff of feathery down. ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... Here lately You bear your little self sedately. You've shed your rompers; you want dresses Prinked out with frillies; fluff your tresses; Delight your daddy, aunts, and mother; And sisterly set straight your brother. Your bib-and-tucker days abolished, Your manners and your nails are polished. One baby trait remains, thank glory! You're still a glutton for a ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... report. Young Thomas gravely said that it was unfounded. The minister looked graver still and said he was sorry—he had hoped it was true. His wife glanced significantly about Young Thomas's big, untidy sitting-room, where there were cobwebs on the ceiling and fluff in the corners and dust on the mop-board, and said ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery



Words linked to "Fluff" :   blow, pratfall, bollocks, louse up, frippery, ball up, disentangle, miscarry, loosen, blunder, ruffle, bumble, foul up, mishandle, comb out, bungle, bloomer, bollix, bollocks up, marshmallow fluff, frivolity, trifle, boner, blooper, fluffy, boo-boo, fuckup, bollix up, botch, screw up, triviality, fuck up, muff, comb, fluff up, fail, small beer, trivia, mess up, fumble, material, spoil, bagatelle, tease, foul-up, botch up, go wrong, bobble, muck up, bodge, stuff, flub



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