tuft

From Middle English tuft, toft, tofte, an alteration of earlier *tuffe (> Modern English tuff), from Old French touffe, tuffe, toffe, tofe (“tuft”) (modern French touffe), from Late Latin tufa (“helmet crest”) (near Vegezio). Compare Old English þūf (“tuft”), Old Norse þúfa (“mound”), Swedish tuva (“tussock; grassy hillock”), Swedish tova (“tangled knot”), Swedish tofs (“tuft, tassel”), from Proto-Germanic *þūbǭ (“tube”), *þūbaz; akin to Latin tūber (“hump, swelling”), Ancient Greek τῡ́φη (tū́phē, “cattail (used to stuff beds)”).

• IPA^(key): /tʌft/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌft

tuft (plural tufts)

1. A bunch of feathers, grass or hair, etc., held together at the base.
2. A cluster of threads drawn tightly through upholstery, a mattress or a quilt, etc., to secure and strengthen the padding.
3. A small clump of trees or bushes.
   • 1755, Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Tobias Smollett, Don Quixote, Volume One, II.4:

     “Not far from this place, there is a tuft of about a dozen of tall beeches […] .”

4. (historical) A gold tassel on the cap worn by titled undergraduates at English universities.
5. (historical) A person entitled to wear such a tassel.
   • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 62, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:

     A college tutor, or a nobleman’s toady, who appears one fine day as my right reverend lord, in a silk apron and a shovel-hat, and assumes benedictory airs over me, is still the same man we remember at Oxbridge, when he was truckling to the tufts, and bullying the poor undergraduates in the lecture-room.

   • 1859–1861, [Thomas Hughes], Tom Brown at Oxford: […], (please specify |part=1 or 2), Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, published 1861, →OCLC:

     Several young tufts, and others of the faster men.

tuft (third-person singular simple present tufts, present participle tufting, simple past and past participle tufted)

1. (transitive) To provide or decorate with a tuft or tufts.
   • a. 1749 (date written), James Thomson, “Winter”, in The Seasons, London: […] A[ndrew] Millar, and sold by Thomas Cadell, […], published 1768, →OCLC:

     His tufted cottage rising through the snow

2. (transitive) To form into tufts.
3. (transitive) To secure and strengthen (a mattress, quilt, etc.) with tufts. This hinders the stuffing from moving.
   • 2017 December 2, “The Impossible Summit of Mt. Neverrest!” (0:13 from the start), in DuckTales, season 1, episode 3:

     They're never gonna get that Ottoman tufted in time!

4. (intransitive) To be formed into tufts.

• tupt, túpt, toft, tøpt, tøft, typt, tyft (dialectal)

From Old Norse tupt, topt, from Proto-Germanic *tumþiz and/or *tumftō. Doublet of tomt. Compare Faroese toft and Icelandic tóft.

• IPA^(key): /tʊft/

tuft f (definite singular tufta, indefinite plural tufter, definite plural tuftene)

1. homestead, ground where a house stands

   … der han sjølv heve Tufterna gravet
   og set sjølv sine Hus uppaa deim.

   … where he has dug the grounds
   and sets his houses on them.

2. an earth floor
3. a plot (of land), site, (building) lot

• tomt

• tyfta

• “tuft” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.
• “tuft” in Ivar Aasen (1873) Norsk Ordbog med dansk Forklaring