duff

CEFRC2

/dʌf/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

01
noun
A failure or useless person or thing.
02
noun
Extra detail
A pudding-style dessert, especially one made with plums or (in the Bahamas) guavas.

Examples

At a glance

Sits at C2 on the CEFR scale

Deep Dive

Extra meanings

A stiff flour pudding, often with dried fruit, boiled in a cloth bag, or steamed.
Coal dust, especially that left after screening or combined with other small, unsaleable bits of coal.
Fine and dry coal in small pieces, usually anthracite.

In context

She's up the duff.
The storekeeper had sent them an unbroken case of canned plum pudding, and probably by this time he was wondering what had become of that blanky case of duff.
Depth of litter and duff under the crown of each tree was measured at a point that appeared to represent average depth. Bulk samples of litter (including duff) were taken under four pinyons and three junipers, and ovendried.

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Question 1 · Quick check

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

The word in print, with each source given in full.

Who bravely stuff Themselves with Duff, May laugh at Doctor's bills.
1918, Norman Lindsay, The Magic Pudding, page 87
From its surface, he insisted, plain food became ambrosia, water nectar, and the duffest dope would blow your mind.
1996, Catherine Merriman, State of Desire, page 155
The band developed its sound, shamblingly at first, on the road, in an era before thousands of blog or YouTube users could form an opinion of a band based on some MySpace demos and a duff early gig in Tacoma.
2008 May 18, R J Smith, “Death Cab Is Up for the Long Haul”, in New York Times
All the other parts were played by a gallery of Dickensian character actors, including Thorley Walters, Francis Matthews and, yes, Michael Ripper, who lent gravitas to the duffest dialogue lines.
2009, Christopher Fowler, Paperboy, page 225
Later on, all the tinned meat came to an end, likewise the potatoes, and we lived on salt meat, biscuit, and duff; this fare was served out to all the messes on board, and we, I was going to say, saloon-folk, fared no better than the fo'castle hands.
1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 196

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Representing a northern England and Scots pronunciation of dough.