Definition of "tuft"

tuft

/tʌft/

noun
plural tufts
1. A bunch of feathers, grass or hair, etc., held together at the base.
2. A cluster of threads drawn tightly through upholstery, a mattress or a quilt, etc., to secure and strengthen the padding.
3. A small clump of trees or bushes.
  Quotations
  “Not far from this place, there is a tuft of about a dozen of tall beeches […] .”
  1755, Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Tobias Smollett, Don Quixote, Volume One, II.4
4. (historical) A gold tassel on the cap worn by titled undergraduates at English universities.
5. (historical) A person entitled to wear such a tassel.
  Quotations
  A college tutor, or a nobleman’s toady, who appears one fine day as my right reverend lord, in a silk apron and a shovel-hat, and assumes benedictory airs over me, is still the same man we remember at Oxbridge, when he was truckling to the tufts, and bullying the poor undergraduates in the lecture-room.
  1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 62, in The History of Pendennis. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850
  Several young tufts, and others of the faster men.
  1859–1861, [Thomas Hughes], Tom Brown at Oxford: […], (please specify |part=1 or 2), Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, published 1861
verb
third-person singular simple present tufts, present participle tufting, simple past and past participle tufted
1. (transitive) To provide or decorate with a tuft or tufts.
  Quotations
  His tufted cottage rising through the snow
  1726, James Thomson, “Winter”, in The Seasons, London: […] A[ndrew] Millar, and sold by Thomas Cadell, […], published 1768
2. (transitive) To form into tufts.
3. (transitive) To secure and strengthen (a mattress, quilt, etc.) with tufts. This hinders the stuffing from moving.
  Quotations
  They're never gonna get that Ottoman tufted in time!
  2017 December 2, “The Impossible Summit of Mt. Neverrest!” (0:13 from the start), in DuckTales, season 1, episode 3
4. (intransitive) To be formed into tufts.

Definition of "tuft"

tuft

noun

Quotations

Quotations

verb

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