Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. the pubic hair of either gender.

1937–84		Partridge DSUE (1984) 410/2: C.19–20.
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular.
1980		Maledicta IV:2 (Winter) 187: To [...] return to the quim whiskers, common terms include [...] the derisive (fur, fluff).

2. (also fluffery) rubbish, nonsense, something superficial.

1836		‘Ax My Eye’ in New Cockalorum Songster in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) II 24: Stow your gab and guffery, / To every fakement I am fly, / I never takes no fluffery.
1841		‘Ax My Eye’ Dublin Comic Songster 100: [as 1836].
1899		Pall Mall Gaz. 7 Oct. 1/2: [headline] From Fluff to Facts.
1907		Lone Hand May 80: You’ll be amazed to find what drivel the Judge can talk, and listen to. Absolutely silly drivel. He loves ‘fluff’.
1922		S. Lewis Babbitt (1974) 99: 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.
1946		R. Grinstead They Dug a Hole 8: Fluff to yourself, boy! We’re going on active tack.
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 83: fluff [...] elaborate mannerisms ‘I can’t stand that big dyke; she’s always makin’ with that butch fluff like openin’ doors for me an’ lightin’ my cigarillos’.
1996		S. Frank Get Shorty [film script] It’s nothing. It’s fluff. Nothing you’d be interested in.
2005		J. Stahl I, Fatty 154: The Round-Up. A nice enough bit of fluff.
2011		Eve. Standard 17 Feb. 51/4: Since when is an awards night the place to downplay showbiz fluff?

3. a young, attractive, but empty-headed woman; occas. man; esp. in phr. bit of fluff ; also attrib.

1906		S. Ford Shorty McCabe 140: When in sails a fluff delegation. There was a fat old one, that looked as though she might be mother [and] a slim baby-eyed one, that any piker would have played for sister.
1908		K. McGaffey Sorrows of a Show Girl Ch. xvii: Them Senators that put the kibosh on that racetrack bill can consider themselves as personal friends of every chorus Fluff that ever scanned a dope sheet.
1920		Ade Hand-made Fables 110: The Fluff who wants a Partner for Bridge.
1934		L. Berg Prison Nurse (1964) 29: It ain’t often we get a nifty piece of fluff like that around.
1940		W.R. Burnett High Sierra in Four Novels (1984) 395: I hate to see a guy like you making a sap of himself over a little fluff like that.
1945		C. Himes ‘Make with the Shape’ in Coll. Stories (1990) 113: He had to compromise on a chorus fluff named Lulu.
1949		H. Miller Sexus (1969) 134: [of men] Does it prove that they wouldn’t have been better than the old fluffs whom we’ve got sitting on the bench now?
1956		N. Algren Walk on the Wild Side 258: One of my fluffs heard a radio broadcast ’n sent me a lawyer.
1966		Trimble 5000 Adult Sex Words and Phrases.
1974		D. Goines Daddy Cool (1997) 101: He was gettin’ ready to ball the little fluff right in the front seat on Main Street.
1988		T. Harris Silence of the Lambs (1991) 170: Jack Crawford and his fluff. They’ll get together openly after his wife dies.
1990		(con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 51: Those movie star guys are just fluff. [...] Cute, but fluff.

4. (US, also fluffbrain) a foolish person.

1902		‘Hugh McHugh’ It’s Up to You 101: He’s one of those fluffs who whistle for the police when they lose eighty cents.
1914		Ade ‘The New Fable of What Transpires’ in Ade’s Fables 143: Next morning he had to bare his Soul to the Head of the Firm. This revered Fluff should have been known as Mr. Yes-But.
1924		H.L. Wilson Professor How Could You! 265: We couldn’t turn the poor old fluff (sap) loose.
1967–8		Baker et al. CUSS 119: Fluff brain A person who always fools around.

5. anything – writing, music – considered lightweight.

1942		R. Chandler High Window 88: The man was [...] sneering at me over the New Republic. ‘You ought to lay off that fluff and get your teeth into something solid, like a pulp magazine,’ I told him, just to be friendly.
1997		C. Hiaasen Lucky You 119: It was the only contest that pretended fluff was worthwhile journalism.
2000		Indep. Rev. 12 May 14: McCrae’s Seventies piece of disco fluff ‘You Can Have It All’.
2023		(con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 119: I fed him fluff on Monroe’s bedroom sloth.

6. the passive, ‘feminine’ partner in a lesbian couple.

1964		Homosexuality & Citizenship in Florida 24: Glossary of Homosexual Terms [...] fluff (or femme: A female homosexual who is effeminate in her ways .
1971–2		C. Shafer ‘Catheads [...] and Cho-Cho Sticks’ in Abernethy Bounty of Texas (1990) 204: fluff, n. – the female who plays the female role in a lesbian relationship.
1982		Maledicta VI:1+2 (Summer/Winter) 132: Fluff (though Martin Sherman’s recent play Bent makes a big point of using this term to describe male homosexuals in a manner less derogatory than queer).
2000		Other Side of the Wall: Prisoner’s Dict. July 🌐 Fluff: Feminine lesbian.

7. (gay) an effeminate male homosexual.

1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular.
1986		C. Stroud Close Pursuit (1988) 134: I was going to go over to Fourteenth Street, look-see if our fist-fucker is back in business and kick some fluffs over on Christopher Street.
1991		D. Jarman letter Smiling in Slow Motion (2000) 25: Says he’s going to be invincible – will split any fluff I look at down the middle when he’s finished his taekwon-do.

8. (US gay) the male genitals, esp. the anus .

1972

B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 83: fluff [...] 5. (camp) reference to one’s own sex organs, especially the ass.

9. (US black) the vagina.

1975		J. Wambaugh Choirboys (1976) 100: Francis [...] aimed it not at Wolfgang but at Olga’s bulging fluff.
1980		E. Folb Runnin’ Down Some Lines 152: Terms like fluff for vagina [...] suggest a woman’s soft or furlike parts.

10. (Aus.) an act of breaking wind.

1985

‘Thommo’ Dict. Aus. Swearing & Sex Sayings n.p.: FLUFF — Fart.

11. (US drugs) cocaine.

2013

T. Dorsey Riptide Ultra-Glide 8: Coke, blow, flake, fluff, snow, marching dust, weasel powder, white death [etc].