Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also tuff) female pubic hair, by ext. the vagina.

1661		Wandring Whore V 7: […] helping a Gentlewoman on Horseback, slipp’t his hand under her belly and tore a tufft of hair off her Commodity.
c.1682		‘Satyr Undisguis’d’ Harleian Mss. 7319.271: Lecherous Stamford, poor Monmouth draws so That his Grace need never a hunting to go To keep him in Tuft.
c.1689		F. Fane ‘Iter Occidentale’ Harleian Mss. 7312.20: Deep in an uncouth Vaile ’twixt swelling hills Curl’d ore with shady Tufts.
1702		T. Brown Letters from the Dead to the Living in Works (1760) II 186: You did die a martyr for a pair of penetrable whiskers, fell a bleeding sacrifice to a cloven tuft.
1737		The Female Contest 23: Her lovely all-alluring Tuff / Was black, and near as big, / As any Northern Monarch’s Muff.
a.1749		Robertson of Struan Poems (1752) [title] ‘On a Lady of Pleasure, that had a Tuft of Ribbons at the Bottom of her Stomacher.’.
1762		Bridges Homer Travestie (1764) I 122: For Juno, ever mischief hatching, / Had rubb’d her belly bare with scratching, / Whilst Venus, so divinely fair, / Had got a glorious tuft of hair.
1790		‘Bumper Allnight. Esquire’ Honest Fellow 68: Her lovely all-alluring tuff, / Was black and near as big / As any northern monarch’s muff.
1961		C. Himes Pinktoes (1989) 114: Just keep flipping your tuft at him.
1793		Bacchanalian Mag. 36: Her lovely, all-alluring tuff, / Was black.
c.1850		Peeping Tom (London) 30 118/2: ‘Every hill in the prospect [i.e. of a naked girl] is tufted!’.
1980		C. James Observer 10 Feb. n.p.: [The Degas drawings] are all brothel scenes and show plenty of tuft [DSUE].

2. an aristocratic, titled undergraduate [the tuft was that adorning the mortarboards of titled students – of gold threads rather than the usual black].

1755		implied in tuft-hunter n. (1)
1799		Sporting Mag. Dec. XV 125/1: If I thought any were so dull, as not yet rightly to comprehend what a tuft is, 1 should tell them it is a noble, or wealthy student, at the University, so called, from part of his head dress.
1840		Thackeray Shabby Genteel Story (1853) 34: The lad went to Oxford [...] frequented the best society, followed with a kind of proud obsequiousness all the tufts.
1850		Thackeray Pendennis II 233: Still the same man we remember at Oxbridge, when he was truckling to the tufts, and bullying the poor undergraduates.
1861		T. Hughes Tom Brown at Oxford (1880) 84: Gentlemen-commoners [...] seem to me to be worse than the tufts, and to furnish most of their toadies.
1873		Sl. Dict. 330: Tufts at the University, noblemen, who pay high fees and are distinguished by golden TUFTS, or tassels, in their caps.
1897		Eve. Teleg. (Dundee) 1 June 2/3: Jubilee Tuft-Hunting. [...] There has been a rush for Jubilee tufts [...] a gentleman believed to possess great influence [...] has been ‘approached’ in behalf of no fewer than 500 gentlemen anxious for knighthoods.