puff n.
1. in senses of a lit. or fig. puff of air.
(a) breath, a breaking of wind.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Arse Musica 10: I cannot than forbear Mr. Puff-in dorst once more to thank you for your Regard to the Family of the Fart-Alls. | |
| Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 101: Most modern puffs I ever knew, / When set on fire burn only blue, / Or simple red, but when behind / This nimble Goddess lets out wind, / You see not only reds and blues, / But all the colours painters use. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | ‘De Kilmainham Minit’ in Luke Caffrey’s Gost 7: But when on de Ground your friend lies, / Oh! tip me a Snig in the Jugler; [...] As de Surgints of Otomy tell us; / Dat when I’m cut down from de Rope. / You’ll bring back de Puff to me Bellows, / And set me, once more, on me Pins. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | N.Y. Daily Express 26 June 2/5: The puff was so nearly choaked out of him. | |
| Minor Dialogues 104: Might as well sive your puff. | |
| Butterfly and Firefly 23 Nov. 8: He blew it out with all his puff. | |
| ‘Attis: Or, Something Missing’ Complete Poems 28: Out of puff / noonhot in tweeds and gray felt. | |
| (con. 1880–90s) I Knock at the Door 57: An’ he was makin’ off, snarled the man, an’ knockin’ the puff out o’ people. | |
| (con. 1940s) Sinking of the Kenbane Head 104: Hartshorn had no puff left. | |
| Guardian Guide 6–12 Nov. 4: That fat old plain-clothes grunter [...] who always ran out of puff when pursuing ‘perps’. | |
| Outlaws (ms.) 115: Just trying to get away from the cunt long enough to get my puff back. |
(b) a tout, a house bidder at an auction sale.
| View of London & Westminster (2nd part) 13: [T]he President of the Sale surrounded by his Puffs and Setters (Persons appointed to bid, to decoy or postpone others). |
(c) (UK Und.) an informer.
| Proceedings Old Bailey 11 Sept. 144/1: As I was going with the Prisoners before Sir John Lade, Baugh being left behind, One of them said, What does Baugh stay for? Another answered, to be made a Puff, what do you think he stays for else. – Baugh made an Information of this, and six or seven other Robberies. | |
| Discoveries (1774) 43: He is turned a Puff; he is turned an Evidence. | |
| Whole Art of Thieving [as cit. 1753]. |
(d) a hairdresser [the puffing of powder onto hair].
| Rambler’s Mag. Mar. 105/2: The Familar Hairdresser [...] She took up the tongs, as being the neartest weapon of offence, and poor puff would have smarted for his temeerity, had he not made the best of his way out of the house, leaving behind him his curling-irons. | |
| Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies 83: He dresses her wig in a new fashion way / [...] / She constantly smiles on her doating dear puff / And thinks he can never be tumbled enough. |
(e) (also puff-puff) life; esp. as in one’s puff.
| Sporting Times 8 Mar. 1/3: So saying, he Picked up the Wretched Rodent and put an End to its Puff by Compassionately pulling off its Onion. | |
| Sporting Times 7 Apr. 2/2: Good old ‘Billy,’ who never hurt a swinger in his puff-puff. | |
| Marvel 30 June 646: I never see such a one-eyed ’ole of a place, never in my puff! | |
| ‘Comedians All’ Sporting Times 17 Apr. 1/2: We are all of us mummers throughout our brief puff. | |
| Inimitable Jeeves 101: Isn’t she the most wonderful girl you ever saw in your puff? | |
| ‘The Amazing Hat Mystery’ in Young Men in Spats 101: ‘Well, if that isn’t the most remarkable coincidence I ever came across in my puff!’. | |
| Third Policeman (1974) 53: Never in my puff did I hear of any man stealing anything but a bicycle when he was in his sane senses. | |
| December Bride 265: ‘Never saw it in me puff,’ he said. | |
![[Scot]](/static/img/flags/sco.png "Scotland") | ‘Sexual Disaster Quartet’ in Acid House 64: Rab’s nivir hud a ride in ehs puff; perr wee cunt. | |
| Be My Enemy 193: She’d never owned a Kate Bush record in her puff. | |
| (con. 1980s) Skagboys 148: Might as well have a baw n chain fastened tae yir ankle aw yir puff. | |
| February’s Son 74: ‘Don’t think Connolly’s ever been out of Glasgow in his puff’. | |
| To Die in June 62: ‘She’s a cleaner, has been all her puff’. |
2. a house player in a gambling house, one who decoys victims into a crooked game [SE puff, to praise to excess and for one’s own interest; Grose (1785) notes auction jargon puff or puffer, one who bids at auctions, not with an intent to buy, but only to raise the price of the lot, for which purpose many are hired by the proprietor of the goods on sale].
| Derby Mercury 14 Jan. 3/1: ‘List of Officers attached to Gaming-houses’ [...] 4. Two Puffs, who have Money given them to decoy others to play. | |
| Sporting Mag. Sept. X 311/2: [as cit. 1730]. | |
| Sporting Mag. May XXIV 152/1: A puff, handsomely paid to decoy others to pay. | |
| (con. 1731) A. Griffiths Chronicles of Newgate 208: [as cit. 1731]. | |
| USA Confidential 139: Samish devours the planted puffs. |
3. in senses of insubstantiality of one’s character.
(a) (also puffo) a male homosexual [mid-20C+ uses are indistinguishable from poof n. (1)].
| Real Life in London I 92: A Mr. Winpebble, of mis-managing notoriety, and also a ponderous puff. | |
| Sl. and Its Analogues V 314/1: Puff [...] (tramps’). – A sodomist. | |
| Thieves Slang ms list from District Police Training Centre, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwicks 8: Puff: Effeminate male person. | |
| Tramp at Anchor 76: A common slang term [...] a ‘puffanagrass’ meaning that he is an effeminate sex-pervert who also carries information to the warders. | |
| (con. 1940s) Borstal Boy 112: Get stuffed, you bloody puff. | |
| ‘Jilted John’ 🎵 She is a bitch / He’s a puff. | |
| Liza’s England (1996) 5: Red paint daubed the walls [...] ‘Mac is a wanker,’ ‘Stew is a puff’. | |
| Guardian Guide 22–28 May 6: Anyone who likes opera is a puff, puffo. | |
| Stump 58: Yeh great big fuckin puff. Yeh gunner get all sulky on me now. |
(b) a general term of abuse; the object’s actual sexuality is irrelevant.
| Semi-Tough 177: You are writing what they say in the magazine business is an all-out, no-holds-barred, hard-hitting puff. | |
| 5x5x5x5x5 3v: Posh puff clever shite [...] we hate puffy snobs. | |
| Awaydays 67: Whatever feats I achieve with The pack, and however highly Elvis or anybody else thinks of me [...] to him I’m still a puff. | |
| Vatican Bloodbath 49: Shut it, puff! |
4. with ref. to the ‘puff’ that accompanies the explosion.
(a) (US Und.) dynamite.
| Autobiog. of a Thief 285: Sammy was a good box-man. He never used puff (nytro-glycerine). | |
| Vocab. Criminal Sl. 67: puff [...] Powder used to blow a safe. | |
| Man’s Grim Justice 54: They were different boxes in those days [...] They could drill ’em and shoot ’em open with puff (powder). | |
| Und. and Prison Sl. | |
| Criminal Sl. (rev. edn). | |
| et al. DAUL 165/1: Puff. Crude nitroglycerine or picric, used by safeblowers. | |
| World’s Toughest Prison 813: puff – Powder to be employed in blowing a safe. |
(b) the explosion caused by ‘blowing’ a safe.
| Vocab. Criminal Sl. 67: puff [...] the explosion of ‘soup’ in a safe. |
5. in drug uses [SE puff, an emission of smoke].
(a) an opium user.
| Narcotics Lingo and Lore. |
(b) tobacco.
| Confessions of Proinsias O’Toole 86: A very full account of his depredations not only at the gargle and puff. |
(c) cannabis.
| Gate Fever 30: Entrance to certain cells is by invitation only, usually if there is hashish – ‘puff’ – on offer. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Godson 212: ‘Can we buy a bag?’ [...] ‘Puff’s pretty hard to get now, Les’. | |
| ‘Politics of Pot’ in What Do You Reckon (1997) [ebook] You like nothing more than a drink and a bit of a puff. | |
| Vinnie Got Blown Away 15: I was only on the estate for some puff and visit Kelly. | |
| Layer Cake 36: Most nights I was glad when bang-up came so I could be on my jack with a puff and me books. | |
| Rosa Marie’s Baby (2013) [ebook] ‘o you like a little puff’. | |
| Raiders 133: There was a bit of a puff drought in south London, due to some large [...] seizures. |
In compounds
(US) one who flatters or praises insincerely, esp. in the commercial world.
| Broadway Racketeers 188: The Puff Pedlar works on exactly opposite lines. His publication is the bait. He dangles a eulogistic editorial before the chump and makes him pay to see it in print. | |
 | ‘The Puffies’ on GoodReport.net 🌐 Or perhaps, not content to simply describe a new writer as the next Faulkner, the true puff artist now feels he has to go one further and say that Author X is ‘like Faulkner and Pynchon rolled into one!’. |
a (regular) cannabis smoker.
| (con. 1980s) A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun 283: Terry assumed that I was into a bit of puff, simply because most of the people he knew I ran with on the out were big puff-heads. |
(US) a weakling; an effeminate man.
| Plainclothes Naked (2002) 281: There was a long silence [...] before the puffwad just clicked off. |
In phrases
all one’s life.
| Ulysses 330: You never saw the like of it in all your born puff. | |
| My Uncle Silas 114: I’ve been fighting against it for eighty years and more. All my puff. | |
| None But the Lonely Heart 43: Ada had the most marvellousest pair of tits you ever see in all your puff. | |
| Birmingham Post 22 Aug. n.p.: I’ve never sin such a thing in all my puff. |
(drugs) to smoke cannabis.
| in Living Dangerously 72: Sitting around with my mates, having a puff (cannabis). |
on one’s own.
| Trainspotting 54: We cannae, likesay, leave Les on her puff. |
(US) marijuana.
| UNC-CH Campus Sl. Spring 2014. |