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Fluff   Listen
verb
Fluff  v. t. & v. i.  To make or become fluffy; to move lightly like fluff.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fluff" Quotes from Famous Books



... Down the steps tumbled a pink gingham frock and a fluff of yellow bobbed hair that proved to be four-year-old Ruth Baker. She lived next door to Sunny Boy, and her brother, Nelson, was already marking time with the ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White

... 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

... a 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 ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... Fluff," he replied. "She's really good company. I wish I could talk her talk. She has a fine line of conversation if I could ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... of 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 of doves were greeting ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... 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

... petrel hardly ever goes on land except to lay her eggs. Her nest is in a hole in some high cliff by the sea. She hatches one little bird. It looks like a ball of fluff. The nest ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... pretty women. It was not so much the things he said,—light, jesting, personal things,—as the indications they gave of the overweening vanity of the spoiled boy and of a brain which occupied itself merely with the fluff and thistledown of life. He was, and he knew it and made no effort to disguise the fact, a typical specimen of the very small class of indolent bystanders made rich by the energy of other men who are to be found in every country. He was, in fact, the peculiar type of aristocrat only to ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... and adventurous fluff-ball of gray-gold-and-white fur, Bruce swiftly developed into a lanky giant. He was almost as large again as is the average collie pup of his age; but, big as he was, his legs and feet and head were huge, ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune

... and cup-shaped, having a diameter of about 31/4 inches by 21/4 inches in depth, lined inside with fine grass, the soft fluff from the willow when in seed, ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... the way her "waved" hair would fluff out and catch the light like a kind of halo, and each one of the nine organdie ruffles that were going to trim the bottom of her dress; she could even see the glossy, dark green background of potted palms—mother had promised to lend her two biggest ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... lift Marian! Such a lump. You are like an undulating billow warmed by the sun. And all this fluff of muslin about ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... Gnome-wrought of moonbeam-fluff and gossamer, Silent as scent, perhaps thou chariotest Mab or King Oberon; or, haply, her His queen, Titania, on some midnight quest.— Oh for the herb, the magic euphrasy, That should unmask thee to mine eyes, ah me! And all that world at ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein

... Parliamentary Whip of last year and a stationery bill of the year before; and several bills of my employer, not to mention a cheque for ninety-seven pounds which I suppose he would like me to send to the bank; and a great deal of fluff and a pipe or two and four or five stamped letters which it is now too late to post. That is all there is in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various

... to which they were attached for support have been severed. A common reason of fogging off is caused by cutting off the mushrooms in gathering them and leaving the stumps in the ground; in a few days' time these stumps develop a white fluff or flecky substance, which seems to poison every thread of mycelium leading to it, and all the mushrooms, present and to come, that are attached to this arrested web of mycelium are affected by the poison of the decaying old mushroom stump, and fogg off. Any impure matter in the bed with which ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer

... 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 ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens

... Course, like all these poets, this 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

... 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 ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... mutters, as tier on tier of cloud drops under. "We generally pick up an easterly draught below three thousand at this time o' the year. I hate slathering through fluff." ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling

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

... and if all I've been born for is just to work my heart and my life away, and to sicken i' this dree place, wi' them mill-noises in my ears for ever, until I could scream out for them to stop, and let me have a little piece o' quiet—and wi' the fluff filling my lungs, until I thirst to death for one long deep breath o' the clear air yo' speak on—and my mother gone, and I never able to tell her again how I loved her, and o' all my troubles—I think if this life is th' end, and that there's ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... dishes of nuts; and popped corn that popped with the most resounding pops in all my experience—popped a tubful, and Laddie melted maple sugar and poured over it and made big balls of fluff and sweetness. He took a pan and filled it with grains, selected one at a time, the very largest and whitest, and made an especial ball, in the middle of which he put a lovely pink candy heart on which was printed in red letters: "How can this ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... 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 ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle

... 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 now—you are here!" ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... 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 Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn

... purpose, but is expensive and difficult to procure in the pure state. Tobacco dust is also used. Insect powder is applied by holding the hen by the feet and working the dust thoroughly into the feathers, especially the fluff. The use of insect powder should be confined to sitting hens and fancy stock, as the cost and labor of applying is too great for use upon the common chicken. The third method is suitable for young chickens, and consists of applying some oil and grease on the head ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... Baby's gone. 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 story. ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... pretty hard," said my mother, "not to have shone a—little! To brood a baby forest in one's arms—if only for a single day—? Think of the experience!" Even at the very thought of it she began to shine all over again! "Funny little fluff o' green," she laughed, "no fatter than a fern!" Her voice went suddenly all wabbly like a preacher's. "But, oh, the glory of it!" she said. "The potential majesty! Great sweeping branches—! Nests for birds, shade for lovers, masts for ships to plow the great world's waters—timbers ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... 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^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... tell me!" cried Sir Peter in a quieter voice, "that that little piece of dandelion fluff—that baggage—that city fellow's half baked, peeled onion of a minx is going to desert her husband? That's what I call it—desertion! What does she want to go back to her people for? She must go with him! She must go to Davos! She shall go to Davos! if I have to take her there by the hair! I never ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome

... expectations—a green and white gown, with long, tight sleeves, a green silk handkerchief round her neck and crossed in front, a green parasol, and green gloves. It was strange enough to see this verdant caterpillar turn out of a road-waggon, and gracefully shake herself free from the bits of straw and fluff which would usually gather on the raiment of the ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... 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

... would have 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; ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand

... cup will be, e'en were the virtue thine to stop the loom, Thine though the gift the willow fluff to sing, pity who will thy doom? High in the trees doth hang the girdle of white jade, And lo! among the snow ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... blades, scarce dry of dew, and with its juicy sweetness tasting the full of bitterness. And the gray shade stalked out again, and stood there in the warmth of the August day, with its scent and murmur of full summer, while the pigeons cooed and dandelion fluff drifted by. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... 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 ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton

... For one could never tell, Head-nurse remarked, what might happen amongst people who spoke the language of ghosts in the desert, and kept such strange animals. A great golliwog of a black dog who sat on one side of the tent like an image, watching them as if he meant to eat them, and a great fluff of a white cat sitting on the other with her eyes shut as if she did not want ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel

... the 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 ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... danger zone. From the earth the tiny white shell clouds have a fascination for the onlooker. More so perhaps, than for the man in an aeroplane, not many yards distant from the bursting shrapnel. The ball of fluff that follows the sharp "bang" is small at first, but unrolls itself lazily until it assumes quite a size. That morning the anti-aircraft gunners seemed unusually accurate. The third shell burst not far below the plane, and two bits of the projectile punctured ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll

... 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 ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... 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' none to ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... or pain. As a boy his troubles had lost their sting in the consoling largeness of the open, under the shade of trees, within sight of the bowing wheat fields with the wind making patterns on the seeded grain. Now his thoughts, drifting aimless as thistle fluff, went back to those childish days of country freedom, when he had spent his vacations at his uncle's farm. He used to go with his widowed mother, a forlorn, soured woman who rarely smiled. He remembered his irritated wonder as she sat complaining in the ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... suddenly and 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 ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... Hob 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 ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess

... out-pouring soldiers, the tiny workers ran and bit and chewed away at whatever they could reach. Dozens of ants made their way up to the cotton, but found the utmost difficulty in clambering over the loose fluff. Now and then, however, a needle-like nip at the back of my neck, showed that some pioneer of these shock troops had broken through, when I was thankful that Attas could only bite and not sting as well. At such a time as this, the greatest difference is apparent ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... 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 ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott

... showed such charming harmony in her character. Poor Miss Ruth, she was evidently suffering severely, as she lay on her couch in front of the fire; her hair was unbound, and fell in thick short lengths over her pillow, reminding me of Flurry's soft fluff, but not quite so bright ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... 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

... into you where none was before. The pawn man—why is it that when you're already frightened is the moment that men choose to frighten you? Because weakness is the worst crime. That I have proved. My work was putting fluff into bolsters. There was a big bright grocers' calendar—the Death of Nelson—and if I could see it through the fog of fluff I felt that was a lucky day. I had to eat my lunch there, raspberry jam sandwiches—not fruit jam, you know, but raspberry flavour. It wasn't nice, and it used to get ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson

... little. A fluff of yellow, a spark of blue, and "Pik-k?" chirped Lovin Child from under the edge, and ducked back again ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower

... 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, ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... 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 fore-feet sleepily, ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy

... rubbed away without fear of hurting herself,—she was so strong. The glance of her cold blue eyes, hard as steel, was forever roving over the furniture and under it, and you could as soon have found a tender spot in her heart as a bit of fluff ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... you would never have expected any result whatever; and she was gentle like her mother, and simple-hearted, with all her elusiveness. But she was not neat, like Mrs. Saunders; the house went at loose ends. Cornelia found fluff under her bed that must have been there a long time. The parlor and the dining-room were kept darkened, and no one could have told what mysteries their corners and set pieces of furniture harbored. The carpets, where the subdued light struck ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells

... you dear little dog, all eyes and fluff! How can I ever love you enough? How was it, I wonder, that any one knew I wanted a little dog, just like you? With your jet black nose, and each sharp-cut ear, And the tail you wag—O you are so dear! Did you come trotting through all the snow ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... cried his daughter, lifting out the top garment and holding it up before them both. "Oh, what a dress to send a poor country cousin! Fluff and flimsy, trimmed with sparklers; cut frightfully low, no sleeves, and a draggly train. Doesn't it look suitable for me?" She flung it aside with a gesture of scorn. "Ah, here's something a shade better! A little dancing frock of rose-coloured chiffon—and her clumsy partner stepped on ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... one-half cup of cream; boil in double boiler until thick and smooth. Let this get cold and add one-half pint whipped cream and pour over and mix thoroughly with fruit and let stand in icebox four hours before serving, giving the marshmallows a chance to become creamy. It will come out like a thick fluff. ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various

... rocker by the window and looked out over the prospect of hills and hollows, the little village, the pine groves, the shimmering, tumbling sea, and the blue sky with its swiftly moving white clouds, the latter like bunches of cotton fluff. The landscape was bare enough, perhaps, but somehow it appealed to him. It seemed characteristically plain and substantial and essential, like—well, like the old Cape Cod captains of bygone days who had spent the dry land portion of their lives there and had loved to call ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln

... winged his alabaster flight Neath the full beams of the mistaken sun O'er gazing crowds, till at th' unwonted sight Some unexpected sportsman with a gun Brought down the bird, all fluff, mid sounding cheers: Mourn, maidens, mourn, and wipe ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various

... days not very distant, Though the memory gives me pain, From the awful word "insistent" Did not utterly refrain; Once it promised to refresh us, Seemed to be alert enough; Now I loathe it, laboured, precious— Merely verbal fluff. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various

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

... look; at last it seemed that she could bear this neglect no longer, and she gently put her large silky paw on her master's leg. Grandcourt looked at her with unchanged face for half a minute, and then took the trouble to lay down his cigar while he lifted the unimpassioned Fluff close to his chin and gave it caressing pats, all the while gravely watching Fetch, who, poor thing, whimpered interruptedly, as if trying to repress that sign of discontent, and at last rested her head beside the appealing paw, looking up with piteous beseeching. So, at least, a lover ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... set of birds 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 ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... evening and referred to the 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 nothing, but ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... out 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

... economical way of extending the meat flavor that I think every young housewife should know it. Mary copied it from The Farmers' Bulletin, an article on the "Economical Use of Meat in the Home." The dumplings, as she prepared them from this recipe, were regular fluff balls, they were so light and flaky. I would add, the cook-pot should be closely covered while cooking or steaming these dumplings, and the cover should not be raised for the first ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas

... 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 sat there, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... 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 a good deal of mutton killed on ...
— Culture and Cooking - Art in the Kitchen • Catherine Owen

... cat is cunning, The long, lean cat is fleet, The nimble one is made for fun, The fluff-ball one is sweet, The Persian pussy's splendid, The Maltese kitty, too, But the special kind I have in mind Is best of all the crew. He's not too quick and frisky, Nor is he slow and fat; He's soft and warm and fits my arm, And he's our ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner

... care and toil. Poor boy! how I pitied his 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, ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... it; but when morning came he scarcely ever remembered anything at all, and in answer to enquiries always said that he had had a very good night indeed, thank you. Once or twice he seemed to have a dim recollection of something—some "bustle and fluff," as he expressed it—during his troubled sleep; and then he would ask anxiously whether he really had been giving them any bother, and assure them that he was so very sorry, and hoped they would forgive him for having been so stupid. At which Aunt Charlotte had to smile ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... cubhood is not a matter of size only. As I look down at this glossy coat of mine, it is hard to believe that it was ever a dirty yellow color, and all ridiculous wool and fluff, as young cubs' coats are. But I must have been fluffy, because I remember how my mother, after she had been licking me for any length of time, used to be obliged to stop and wipe the fur out of her ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson

... carefully, the tall 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 as delicately threw ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... said Lord Henry, 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

... one luminous ghost: and buttercup, daisy, snowdrop, primrose gathered Margaret, vagrant, flighty, light to the winds that wafted her as fluff, and tossed them suddenly aloft, and back they came to be tangled in her bare hair; and now she was ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... and called "Lilly Dale." Aunt Corinne faced about and saw a tiny creature, waxen-faced and with small white hands, and feet in bits of slippers, standing in a dirty spangled dress which was made to fluff out from her and give her an airy look. Her long brown curls hung about her shoulders. But her black eyes were surrounded with brownish rings which gave her a look of singing in her sleep, or in a half-conscious state. She was a delicate little being, and as she sung before the staring people, ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... his 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 ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... walks 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 Bobby ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... room and as he went he 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 was not ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... round of the country and to deliver his letters, but promising to be back again ere long. We had a small mishap ere he went, for as we were talking of his journey my brother Hosea must needs start playing with my father's powder-flask, which in some way went off with a sudden fluff, spattering the walls with fragments of metal. So unexpected and loud was the explosion, that both my father and I sprang to our feet; but Saxon, whose back was turned to my brother, sat four-square in his chair without a glance behind ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... good-night to their babies? Were their sons to be left on the bank by themselves, now that they had shaken the last fringe of down from their tails and lost the fluff from their heads? Did they need no older company, now that they looked like grown-up sandpipers except that their vests had no big ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch

... some of the fly-away seeds that Rap spoke of a moment ago. The fluff is not the seed, but a sort of sail to which the seed is fastened, that the wind may blow it away to another place to grow. If you look carefully you will see that the birds do not eat thistle-down, but only the seed; they will soon use the down to ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... had a rough time. Shock—" The door opened and a nurse came in with a hypo all loaded, its needle buried in a fluff of cotton. Thorndyke eyed it professionally and took it; the nurse faded quietly from the room. "Take it ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

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

... a regular wreck, with a crick in your neck, and no wonder you snore, for your head's on the floor, and you've needles and pins from your soles to your shins, and your flesh is a-creep, for your left leg's asleep, and you've cramp in your toes, and a fly on your nose, and some fluff in your lung, and a feverish tongue, and a thirst that's intense, and a general sense that you haven't been sleeping in clover; But the darkness has passed, and it's daylight at last, and the ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... fluff out the really beautiful cascade of smooth and highly electric hair, his brown hands, so strangely light pink of palm, full of pride in ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... away, dropping 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 convent ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... 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 ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... feminine cry-baby chin and the usual mediocre allotment of freckles on the usual mediocre nose! Mary Faithful was not pretty; she was a "good-looking thing," Trudy would usually conclude, glancing in a near-by mirror to approve of the way her fluff of pink tulle harmonized with her pink camisole ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley

... atmosphere was fresh and redolent of clean earth; odd shell-holes you came across were, miracle of miracles, grass-grown—a sight for eyes tired with the drab stinking desolation of Flanders. A more than spring warmth quickened growing things. White tendrils of fluff floated strangely in the air, and spread thousands of soft clinging threads over telephone-wires, tree-tops, and across miles of growing fields—the curious output of myriads of spinning-spiders. There were quaintly restful visits to the front line. The Boche was a ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)

... like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and habits. His eyes and the end of his restless nose were pink; he could scratch himself anywhere he pleased, with any leg, front or back, that he chose to use; he could fluff up his tail till it looked like a bottle-brush, and his war-cry, as he scuttled through ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... good accurate mechanic in almost all respects, sees in this unearthed "old master," "gem of antiquity," or chef d'oeuvre of Italian art, nothing but the interior of a dirty brown box with a rolling ball of fluff resting in one ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick

... found that feathers instead of down had been used, and they both had a great deal to say on the subject. It was, however, almost impossible to talk without coughing and choking, for their cottage was quite full of fluff and feathers floating about in the air. The children stood in the doorway, and explained their errand ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton

... and a hole into which his whistle fitted for a mouth, and on either side of it, on a Sunday morning, two very high shirt-collars, they towards the end of the week gaining a darker hue and an outward curve. On the top of the pumpkin was a round Spanish hat, the fluff of the catskin which composed it being long enough to make a dozen beavers. He wore, with considerable pride, round his neck a handsome silver call and chain. But with all his oddities, his enemies—and he had a few—were obliged to confess that ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston

... me kidnap 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 ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess

... I feel sorry for her, she is so fat and fretty, and her hair won't fluff a mite. It must be dreadful to think as much scorn as ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd

... the ticking of the best beds was filled with feathers, which 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 flock bed, with rug (used for covering), bolster, ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester

... guinea-pigs were named Fluff and Jamrach, and were a source of much amusement. As they could not agree, and as the fights grew serious, Jamrach was banished to the stable and Fluff occupied a cage in the dining-room. When let out it was curious to see how he would always keep close to the ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... she dribbled a piece of fluff under the bed, after the manner of a professional Association footballer, and relapsed into ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse

... become of that wit? Had that wit been all of the arrogant, upstanding Van Horn, and had it gone out as the flickering flame of a splinter of wood goes out when it is quite burnt to a powder-fluff of ash? Had all that made Van Horn passed like the flame of the splinter? Had he passed into the darkness for ever into which the beast passed, into which passed the speared crocodile, the hooked bonita, the netted ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... a nest," he 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 the tree and sing to you." The boys assured ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... Hello. Were those two buttons of my waistcoat open all the time? Women enjoy it. Never tell you. But we. Excuse, miss, there's a (whh!) just a (whh!) fluff. Or their skirt behind, placket unhooked. Glimpses of the moon. Annoyed if you don't. Why didn't you tell me before. Still like you better untidy. Good job it wasn't farther south. He passed, discreetly buttoning, down the aisle and out through the main door ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... 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 unpleasantly long spell ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... 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 big window ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper

... wrong not to tell me at once. That is the way with you doctors. You are so in the habit of dealing with hysterical women and hypochondriacs that you forget that a man is shaped by nature to bear the naked truth without having it rigged up beforehand in a lot of fluff to disguise its shape. I think I understand. I may live a while longer. And I may not. The same thing could be said of ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... 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 ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various

... 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, which grieved me sorely, for I regarded ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... not 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 time I ever saw him ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... 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 briskly. "But ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... 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 ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac

... 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 ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... nothing for Rodney to do, but to sit down beside Sylvie, with three hours before him, which he had earned by four months among the wheels and cranks and wool-fluff. ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... the poulterer sceptically, when his fellow-tenant bade him good-bye; and parodying the sacred aspiration—"Next year in Manchester," he cried, in genial mockery. The fowl-plucking females laughed heartily, agitating the feathery fluff in ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... mother about now and, whenever I had time, combed and brushed his silver curls till they stood out like fluff. He could spot Susan miles away, and though it was against rules I sometimes took him on board. As we neared camp I told him he must get down, but he would put on an obstinate expression and deliberately push himself behind my back, ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp

... of 'em. I'm boss of a few dozen of these floating palaces at present. In fact we're a patrol and I've caught you red-handed on my own beat, and what I want to know is what the devil are you doing on it? Not trying to elope with that little bit of fluff, I hope, because I can assure you she doesn't love ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston

... 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 ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... 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 ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke

... 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 ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech

... You're a lollard, all right. Now young woman—get your things together and get ready to go—young woman, do you hear me? (She goes up to curtains, and opens them—there lies ANGELA cozily huddled in a heap, fast asleep.) Well, if the little fluff hasn't fallen asleep. ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... 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

... out of the blanket and fell. A thick powder. A white fluff that piled itself in a ridge on the window-sill and curved softly in the corner of the sash. It was cold, and melted on your tongue ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... which came 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 means ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... you think is to happen to-day?—Oh! Aunt Selina, we all have new names at home; even mother is now called Mother Wings and I am Fluff. The other Blue Birds have names they chose for themselves, and Ned is an Owl, and prints our weekly paper called the Chirp. Now, instead of Aunt Selina, I want to call you ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... was sweeping the ward with a broom muffled in a white bag. In the breeze from the open windows, her blue calico wrapper ballooned about her and made ludicrous her frantic thrusts after the bits of fluff that formed eddies under the beds and ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... big 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 ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... the fiery death. The persecution was on a scale never forgiven or forgotten, since Mary began cerdonibus esse timenda. Mary was not essentially inclement. Despite Renard, the agent of the Emperor, she spared that lord of fluff and feather, Courtenay, and she spared Elizabeth. Lady Jane she could not save, the girl who was a queen by grace of God and of her own royal nature. But Mary will never be pardoned by England. "Few men or women have lived less capable of doing ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... good many lads I know come from the country—from the farms up Kinder or Edale way. Well, I don't know so much about your ways as I do about mills; but I know some, and I can guess some. You are not shut up all day with the roar of the machines in your ears, and the cotton-fluff choking your lungs. You have to live harder, perhaps. You've less chances of getting on in the world; but I declare to you, if you're bad and godless—as some of you are—I think there's a precious sight less excuse for you than there ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... was on deck, dressed—for it is always best to dress,—and there, sure enough, right ahead, about a mile and a half off, through the mist, which had come on very thick, I could distinguish the upward shooting fluff of seas shattering against rocks. No land was to be seen, but the line of breakers every instant became more evident; at the pace we were going, in seven or eight minutes we should be upon them. Now, thought I ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... without saying, 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 of ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess



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



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