Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. in poor taste, unappealing, unfashionable, bad; thus as n. poor taste.

1965		Took & Feldman Round the Horne 10 June [BBC radio] Country House! Ugh naph – make it a slum tenement in Salford.
1969		IT 13–25 June 16/4: A lot of these bands are pretty naff anyway.
1977		Record Mirror 17 Sept. 9/2: A really naff song that wouldn’t get anywhere without Ringo’s name on it.
1980		Maledicta IV:2 (Winter) 227: Madge mocks a tasteless person, Brenda (a nickname for Queen Elizabeth II) a naph = bourgeois and square one.
1983		Sun. Tel. 21 Aug. 11/3: It is naff to call your house The Gables, Mon Repos, or Dunroamin’.
1999		Eve. Standard 28 May 52: Europe’s naff annual singalong.
2000		J.J. Connolly Layer Cake 9: They would stand at the ramp in naff wine bars delivering speeches.
2004		I. Rankin Fleshmarket Close (2005) 53: A design mag would [...] enthuse over its revival of seventies naff.
2009		L. McIlvanney All the Colours 71: The naff accents, the slow speech.
2010		W. Ings ‘Trolling the Beat to Working the Soob’ in Int’l Jrnl Lexicog. 23:1 64: Polari words like bona (good), naff (bad or distasteful), cove (friend or mate), lucody (body) [...] appeared in wider gay slang.
2019		P. Baker Fabulosa 295/1: naff, naph 1. tasteless, bad.
2023		R. Milward Man-Eating Typewriter 60: [T]he naff crumbly poorhouses.

2. second-rate, workaday.

1997		N. Barlay Curvy Lovebox 113: Some naff job. Ain’t worth talkin’ ’bou really.
2001		N. Barlay Hooky Gear 2: I dump the naff little cash-box in among the overgrown roots.
2010		K. Richards Life 411: She was more of a London girl [...] And talked like one, ‘Oh, fuckin’ naff’ and all that.
2023		R. Milward Man-Eating Typewriter 93: [T]his naff, meaningless disaster.