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Fluff   /fləf/   Listen
Fluff

noun
1.
Any light downy material.
2.
Something of little value or significance.  Synonyms: bagatelle, frippery, frivolity.
3.
A blunder (especially an actor's forgetting the lines).



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"Fluff" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... egg and very 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 so very good and assisted our recuperation to such ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... sacred to the purpose. This important duty done, she returned to her work. Any one who has ever shifted feathers from one tick to another will not need to be told that when Anne finished she was a sight to behold. Her dress was white with down and fluff, and her front hair, escaping from under the handkerchief, was adorned with a veritable halo of feathers. At this auspicious moment a knock sounded ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... 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 ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long

... her head and shoulders 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 ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... 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

... gloomy streets of Aadheim, making for the quay, and now 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 place fantastic ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... 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 the golden ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... its mazy green, and there, on a branch quite close to my head, sat a little baby owl. I got on the seat and caught it easily, for it could not fly, and how it had reached the branch at all is a mystery. It is a little round ball of gray fluff, with the quaintest, wisest, solemn face. Poor thing! I ought to have let it go, but the temptation to keep it until the Man of Wrath, at present on a journey, has seen it was not to be resisted, as he has often said how much he would like to have a young owl and try ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp

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

... 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 night has been ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... wit of an under Region, grosly imitating on the lower rope, what t'other does neatly on the higher; and is only for the laughter of the vulgar; whilst your wiser and better sort can scarcely smile at him: He talks nothing but kennel-raked fluff, and his discourse is rather like fruit cane up rotten from the ground, than freshly gathered from the Tree. He is so far from a courtly wit, as his breeding seems only to have been i' th' Suburbs; or at best, he seems ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton

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

... up from behind, over the roof. He was carrying a piece of yellow-fluff, part of a lamp-shade, as far as ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome

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

... 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 Henry Rogers came ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... 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

... after several spasmodic repetitions a blue silk curtain flickered at one of the cabin windows on "Lorelei," and a little, old, brown face, with a fringe of fluff round the chin, appeared in the aperture—a walnut of a face, with a pair of shrewd, twinkling eyes, and a pipe in a slit of a mouth. Another call brought on deck a figure which matched the face; and on deck Mr. Paasma (it looked like a gnome, but it could be no other than the caretaker) ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... prizes in England under the name of Baby Flossie. She is the daughter of Duke of Kent and Topso, of Merevale. Her paternal grandparents are Mrs. Herring's well-known champion, Blue Jack, and Marney. The maternal grandparents are King Harry, a prize winner at Clifton and Brighton, and Fluff. ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... worried Jack. He'd stopped twice at mirrors along the hallway to make sure that his gold-threaded gray neckcloth was properly knotted and that his black jacket was zipped up far enough and not too far. Now, in front of the door marked THE CHIEF JUSTICE, he paused before pushing the button to fluff his ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... 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 and Schurka started off, and ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various

... have seen Fluff lap up the milk, which was warmed for him and put in a saucer on the floor of the automobile. He was hungry—was the little stray kitten that had come down out of the evergreen tree—and his little sides seemed to swell out like balloons as ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis

... 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

... ringlet; fimbriae, 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

... ill in the night you can call her. But 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 ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper

... pretty things; it 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 ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... money matters!... That's real silly feminine logic. That's why I never did like, and don't like now, to have to talk to women. I'd rather sit on a barrel of gunpowder than talk to a woman. Brr!... I feel quite chilly—and it's all on account of that little bit of fluff! I can't even see one of these poetic creatures from a distance without breaking out into a cold sweat out of sheer anger. I can't look at them. ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov

... 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 him or a shade ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... though cold, 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 would ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd

... speeches Mr. Burke made to 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 ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher

... 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 ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White

... young; but young folk nah dooant know what ails em. When aw wor a 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. At ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley

... from Pun-nul Bay before sunrise, the base of the Sentinel 'was swathed in white—night's rumpled draperies not yet tossed aside. As the east glowed it stained the mist pink, and so warmed it that it parted into patches of luminous fluff which floated up and dissolved into crystalline air, and the great lumbering rock stood naked ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... 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 ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... 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

... 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 ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville

... flicked a speck of fluff from her black dress—she was all in black, with only a stole of pure white about her shoulders. "But tell me," she added, presently—"for it's one of the reasons why I'm here now—what happened at the inquest to-day? The evening papers are not out, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Unix's 'lint(1)', named for the bits of fluff it supposedly picks from programs] 1. /vt./ To examine a program closely for style, language usage, and portability problems, esp. if in C, esp. if via use of automated analysis tools, most esp. if the Unix utility 'lint(1)' is used. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... 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 you in ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston

... spite of her load, to catch a nice juicy worm now and then and had one left for the babies when she reached them. Those cunning little fluff-balls were so glad to see their mother. For the first ...
— The Little Red Hen - An Old English Folk Tale • Florence White Williams

... darkish room too, but it was smothered in white lace. The mother had seated herself again by the cupboard, and was drawing thread from a vast web of lace. A clump of fluff and ravelled cotton was at her right hand, a heap of three-quarter-inch lace lay on her left, whilst in front of her was the mountain of lace web, piling the hearthrug. Threads of curly cotton, pulled out from between the lengths of lace, ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... 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 ...
— Five Little Friends • Sherred Willcox Adams

... pretty one," said Pennell. "God! but they're queer little bits of fluff, these girls. It beats me how they're always gay, and always easy to get and to leave. And they get rottenly ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... You've 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 easy, ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... 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 ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... 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 of ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... Stocking-Mills spun their own threads, and the first room was like what Annie had seen before in cotton factories, with a faint smell of oil from the machinery, and a fine snow of fluff in the air, and catching to the white-washed walls and the foul window sashes. The tireless machines marched back and forth across the floor, and the men who watched them with suicidal intensity ran after them barefooted when they made off with ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... the darkness, a sheet of rain was driven in upon their faces, and the hall lamp, which dangled from the arm of a marble caryatid, went out with a fluff. Pim, the butler, pushed the heavy door to, straining hard with his shoulder against the wind, while the two men groped their way towards the yellow glare which showed where the cab was waiting. An instant later they were rattling upon ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... 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 trickled ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... seem to have much ambition even in that line of life. I should think Armstrong had got the right kind of place for him. He was a good fellow, but never had much practical ability. You say very little about Clay. How is old 'Sweetness and Light,' any way? I saw some fluff of his in one of the magazines,—a 'romance' I think he called it. This is not an age for scribbling romances. The country wants something solider. I never took much stock in philosophers like Berkeley and Clay. There is the same thing the trouble with them both: they don't want to do any hard ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... 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 ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... the hour fixed for his departure, and the absence of all significant events vexed him. As if to put a crown on his discomfiture, toward the close of the last hour an odd little urchin, grotesquely dressed in a yellow coat, came to beat old blankets over the parapet, and flirted the dirt and fluff into the young man's eyes. Already angered, he was about to hang the young imp for a minute or two over the bridge, when four o'clock sounded, his duty came to his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... 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

... watch from perspiration. The astronomer-royal of Cape Town, Sir T. Maclear, who had considerable experience of the bush when measuring an arc of the meridian, justly remarked to me on the advantage of frequently turning the watch-pocket inside out, to get rid of the fluff and dust that collects in it and is otherwise sure to enter ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

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

... 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 ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester

... nature, reveal themselves by movement. If the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, what is the provision of Nature which enables so tender a thing as a young bird, a mere helpless ball of creamy fluff, to withstand the frizzling heat with which the sun bleaches the broken coral? Many do avail themselves of the meagre shadow of shells and lumps of coral, but the majority are exposed to the direct ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... their names 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 as like as peas to ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist

... a temple. The atmosphere 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 pursuing each other through the paths of a Lilliputian labyrinth, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... 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

... feeling of meeting fairies with their skirts out ready for the dance - a veritable fairy ballet. Nothing could be more lovely than this remarkably treated tree. The rich yellow fluff that will soon appear, lasting for some four to six weeks, will be one note of the yellow chord to be struck in this court-pansy, daffodil, albizzia, the orange and the yellow background of niches. (This floral music for March ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James

... was partially covered with ties and silk. The sick man's lungs were in the last stages of decay. He coughed and expectorated constantly, the woman ceasing from her work to assist him in his paroxysms. The silken fluff from the ties was not good for his sickness; nor was his sickness good for the ties, and the handlers and wearers of the ties yet ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... 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. Still, Bitsybet, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... back with panting flanks and lolling tongue, throws himself on his side exhausted. His mouth is now carefully examined, and two fingers being inserted, scoop round the fauces. The test is successful; there are traces of blood and fluff. "Bravo! Rattler! Show him—good dog. Show him!" Rattler rises with an effort, and lazily strikes into the bush, to the right. We follow in Indian file, and at about half a mile distant we come upon the kangaroo lying dead, with the second ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty

... Gallito's harsh face. Brook trout, freshly caught that afternoon from the rushing mountain stream not far away from the cabin, and smoking hot from the frying pan; an omelette, golden brown and buttercup yellow, of a fluff, a fragrance, with savories hidden beneath its surface, a conserve of fruits, luscious, amber and subtly biting, the coffee of dreams and a bottle of red wine, smooth ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... to the floor, so that the dust will not be scattered. The corners of the room should be swept first, the dust gathered in the centre, and then swept into the dust-pan. The dust should be burned, for it may contain disease germs. Loose hairs and fluff should be removed from the broom after using, and it should also be ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario

... mad impulse to snatch up the precious bottle then and there and make off with it, and might have yielded to the temptation, with disastrous consequences, had not an elderly man entered the shop at that moment. He was bent, and wore rather more fluff and flue upon his person than most well-dressed people would consider necessary, but he came in with a certain air ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... I 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 to myself, we shall see whether a stout heart beats ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... had fallen the day before, and now wherever the ground was not paved the grass shone green. The birch trees in the gardens looked as if they were strewn with green fluff, the wild cherry and the poplars unrolled their long, balmy buds, and in shops and dwelling-houses the double window-frames were being ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... Wow! but 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

... 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 mouth with the back of her paw. Every time my mother had to wipe her mouth she used to try to box ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson

... that she is making good now," said Margaret Howes gravely. "I always felt there was a lot of good in Leighton under her fluff." ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther

... her hungry little scissors agleam in her hand, trotted in alacriously. She sat Charles-Norton on the edge of the tub and bent over him her happy, humming head. Zip-zip-zip, went the scissors, zip-zip—and a soft white fluff that looked like the stuffing of a pillow (an A-one pillow; not the kind upon which Charles-Norton and Dolly laid their modest heads) eddied slowly to Charles-Norton's feet while he shivered slightly to the coldness of the steel. (Dolly cut ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper

... the Bowery, Blowing the fluff of night shelters Off bedraggled garments, And agitating the gutters, that eject little spirals of vapor Like ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... 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 Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll

... warrant for that—yet as high as ye haud him, as I was saying, I hae 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 peace ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... and wash your face and brush all that fluff off your jacket. Then pluck up, and like a man go in to the captain; keep cool—you'll be cooler by that time—and tell him exactly how it all was; say you are sorry, and—Don't keep on shaking your head like that, sir; you'll be doing some injury ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn

... 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

... up straws and wretched stuff, Stooping as if the world's floor were the chart Of the long way thy lazy feet must tread. Thou dreamest of the crown hung o'er thy head— But that is safe—thou gatherest hairs and fluff! ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald

... always 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

... bluebird with light red breast, And your blue back like a feathered sky, You have to go down south Before biting winter comes And my flower-beds are covered with fluff out of the clouds. Before you go, Sing me one more song Of tree-tops down south, Of darkies singing their babies to sleep, Of sand and glittering stones Where rivers pass; Then . . ...
— Poems By a Little Girl • Hilda Conkling

... 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

... 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 fluffy ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson

... dusting-cloths; and she 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

... I, holding up a bleeding forefinger, from which the tail end of the fluff with which the dart was ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... 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

... some movement while dragging Long-Hair out of the mud, and the lid had sprung open, exposing a miniature portrait of Alice, painted when she was a little child, probably not two years old. It was a sweet baby face, archly bright, almost surrounded with a fluff of golden hair. The neck and the upper line of the plump shoulders, with a trace of richly delicate lace and a string of pearls, gave somehow ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... War-loans shriek 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 As ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various

... 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 sides of the room—never ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... 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

... Hester coolly. "You've been talking to her of all sorts of grave, stupid things—and she wants amusing—waking up. I know the look of her. Don't you?" She slipped her arm inside Mary's. "You know, if you'd only do your hair a little differently—fluff it out more—you'd be so pretty! Let me do it for you. And you shouldn't wear that hat—no, you really shouldn't. It's a brute! I could trim you another in half an hour. Shall I? You know—I really like you. He sha'n't ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... 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, ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney

... would not last long. He went toward the living 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... 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 the earth again. Endless were the tricks he ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... Abigail, as if remembering that Betsy had asked her a question. "Any man could strike a spark from his flint and steel that he had for his gun. And he'd keep striking it till it happened to fly out in the right direction, and you'd catch it in some fluff where it would start a smoulder, and you'd blow on it till you got a little flame, and drop tiny bits of shaved-up dry pine in it, and so, little by little, you'd ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... murder has been done by a man who was smoking an Indian lunkah, it obviously narrows your field of search. To the trained eye there is as much difference between the black ash of a Trichinopoly and the white fluff of bird's-eye as there is between a ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... herself 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

... he 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, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various

... broke his bonds. Each found his new wings, and set about shaking them out to full size and shape. Those of the rain-baby came quickly to their proper form, and away he flew to rejoice in perfect life. But though the other shook and shook, his wings would not fluff out. They seemed dried up; they were numbed and ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... dress hung over a chair. He flew to meet her. His eager, nimble fingers unfastened the blue frock. He slipped the next costume over her head without mussing a single beloved blonde hair. The second costume was a tight-fitting silver bodice with a fluff of green skirt underneath. Freddy had it fastened up in a twinkling. Florette ran out again and pulled herself up ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

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

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

... 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 ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... 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 ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... skin rattled a 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

... narrow of the waist, cambric fluting to the little wrist, reedy, translucid hands; cambric falling outwards, and flowing like a great white flower over the greensward, over the mauve stocking, and the little shoe set firmly. The ear like a rose leaf; a fluff of light hair trembling on the curving nape, and the head crowned with thick brown gold. And her pale marmoreal eyes were haunted by a yearning look which he had always loved, and which he had hitherto only found in some beautiful relics of antiquity. She seemed ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... for small birds, and in making and using bird-lime. They make play guns of reed, which go off with a trigger and spring, with a cloud of ashes for smoke. Sometimes they make double-barrelled guns of clay, and have cotton-fluff as smoke. The boys shoot locusts with small toy guns very cleverly. A couple of rufous, brown-headed, and dirty speckle-breasted swallows appeared to-day for the first time this season, and lighted on the ground. This is the kind that builds here in houses, and ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... 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

... beauty 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 the morning with their ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... 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 knowingly a wrong thing," says Mr Froude, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... the garden the sower feels a responsibility, the sweat beads stand on the brow in the sowing. With nature undisturbed it may be the blind flower of the wild violet perfecting its moist seed under the soil, a nod of a stalk to the wind, a ball of fluff sailing by, or the hunger of a bird, and the sowing ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... the mixture with a fork, and add the remaining 1/4 cupful of boiling water. Stir this into the corn starch and cook until the eggs thicken slightly. Remove from the fire and add the orange and lemon juices. Serve cold over the orange fluff. ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

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

... fussy 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 from ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders

... turn all the way round like the neck of a hen. Their arms were long and skinny and muscular, and at the end of each finger they had a spiked nail that was as hard as horn and as sharp as a briar. Their bodies were covered with a bristle of hair and fur and fluff, so that they looked like dogs in some parts and like cats in others, and in other parts again they looked like chickens. They had moustaches poking under their noses and woolly wads growing out of their ears, so that when you looked at them the first time you never wanted to look at them again, ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens

... children, "called 'Sloe.' She was, in her youth and prime, a most valuable retriever, but now is grown too old to do much but sleep in the sunshine. Eddie and Molly were given some time ago two pretty young white rabbits. They looked like balls of white fluff, and were the prettiest toy-like pets you can imagine. One night, unfortunately, they escaped from their ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... was painted red and polished painfully bright, reminding one of a wine-merchant's sign freshly varnished; the walls were concealed under frightful velvet paper which so religiously catches the fluff and dust. The mahogany furniture stood round the room, a reproach against the discovery of America, covered with sanguinary cloth stamped in black with subjects taken from Fontaine's fables. When I say subjects I basely flatter the sumptuous taste of ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... known 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

... chance,' sighed the duck, 'and if it 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 ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various

... white spot of muslin fluff That down the diminishing platform bore Through hustling crowds of gentle and rough To ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... 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

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

... crazy, swoopy stuff, possible at lunar gravity, as Frank and Gimp entered. Her costume was no feminine fluff; cheesecake, of which she presumably didn't have much, was not on display, either. Dungarees, still? No, not quite. Slender black trousers, like some girls use for ballet ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... 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 ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... minute or two he was aware of Muskingon watching him with interest, and by signs begged for a feather from the young Indian's top-knot. Muskingon drew one forth and, under instructions, plucked off a piece of fluff from the root of the feather, a small quill or two, and handed them over. With a length of red silk drawn from his sash John, within half an hour, was bending a very pretty fly on the hook. It did not in the least resemble any winged creature upon ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... had proved a success; the field had in time been covered with cotton plants, which had burst first into a bright yellow blossom, and had then been covered with many balls of white fluff. The picking the cotton had been looked upon at first as great fun, although it had proved hard work before it ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty

... down, he seated himself in the 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 ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln

... 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, Le Tartuffe ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere

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

... and fluffy. A pound of it, loose, takes up much room, and it is to save room that it is pressed into bales, or bundles. Each one weighs about five hundred pounds, and the bales are somewhat larger than a barrel, though of square shape and not round. But if the cotton were allowed to fluff out, it would take up four or five ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope

... 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 halo about ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... 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

... Babies 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

... 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 ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... us went to a party— The nicest ever given. There was apple fluff, and frosted stuff, And cake and candy and fruit enough, But ...
— A Jolly Jingle-Book • Various

... 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, wool, and ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... 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 be a ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... occur: The chicks present a droopy, sleepy appearance; the eyes are closed, and the chicks huddle together and peep much of the time; the whitish intestinal discharge is noticed adhering to the fluff near the margins of the vent, and the young bird is very weak; death may occur within the first few days. After the first two weeks the disease becomes less acute. In the highly acute form the chicks die without showing the usual train ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... back from her face and lay about her shoulders, and the wind had tossed her hair into a soft fluff about her head. ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... motives are mixed," said Emily, "and you mustn't think because they wear high heels and fluff their hair out over their ears that they haven't ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey

... a man in a pulpit. A poppy is easily transformed into an old woman in a red gown. The snap-dragon, when its sides are pinched, can be made to yawn. The mallow contains a minute cheese. By blowing the fluff on a dandelion that has run to seed you can tell (more or less correctly) the time of day. An ear of barley will run up your sleeve if the pointed end is laid just within it; and an apple's seeds make exquisite ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... of bedroom dust and fluff, damped and kneaded with cold soap-suds. Rear view of a girl covered with a damp, draggled, dirt-coloured skirt, which gapes at the waistband from the "body," disclosing a good glimpse of soiled stays (ribs burst), and ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... "I Forgot" laughed as he heard her, but Jean's mamma did not laugh. She knew about "I Forgot," and she laid her hand tenderly on Goldie's little body, all thin under the fluff of feathers. ...
— The Goody-Naughty Book • Sarah Cory Rippey

... said 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 ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... brilliant yellow bill stood astride a peach twig and poured out a bubbling and incessant melody full of fluted grace notes. And on the grass oval a kitten frisked with the ghosts of last month's dandelions, racing after the drifting fluff and occasionally keeling over to attack its own tail, after the enchanting ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... a nook by the world unguessed, Where the thrush's song is sung, And the dainty yellowbird's fairy nest, Lined with the fluff from the cattail's crest, 'Mid the juniper boughs is hung; And further on, by the elder hedge, Where the turtles come out to sleep, The marsh-hen builds, by the brooklet's edge, Her warm, wet home in the swampy sedge, 'Mid the shadows so ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln

... and rearranged his round, astonished features, when Alfred, beaming and buoyant, brought the bundle of fluff to a full stop ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo

... now, it's one o' them stoopid-looking Tommy soft sort o' howls, as Mr Oliver Lane shot at one day. You know, lad, them big, all of a heap sort o' things, all duffie and fluff." ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... at last, and the tissue-paper blew up in a great fluff; and out of it rolled a beautiful long, soft, thick gray cloak of finest texture and silken lining, with a great puffy collar and cuffs of deep, soft ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... used to mud, are you? You don't look as if you were." She pointed down the glen, and Lawrence saw that some high spring, dammed at its exit and turned back on itself, had filled the wide bottom with a sponge of moss thickset with flowering rush and silken fluff of cotton grass. "There's no danger in summertime, the shepherds often cross it and so do ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... hurricane sprang from one point, a gale from another, a 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 ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs

... 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 ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick

... has no honour in his own country,' said Dick, ruefully, dusting his knees. 'This filthy fluff will never brush ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... over the pile 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 dhunkara. The ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... honour in his own country," said Dick, ruefully, dusting his knees. "This filthy fluff will ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling



Words linked to "Fluff" :   flub, go wrong, bloomer, ball up, fuckup, blooper, foul-up, material, trivia, miscarry, fail, stuff, trifle, boner, pratfall, loosen, louse up, disentangle, comb, small beer, comb out, bollocks, triviality, boo-boo, blunder



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