Other forms: bluffs, bluffing
To bluff is to pretend your hand is better than it is. Bluff your way through, he was bluffing, call his bluff.
In poker the bluff is a core tactic, and the whole game depends on the fact that a bad hand played confidently can win. Outside cards it means pretending to knowledge, strength or intention you do not have: bluff your way through an interview. Call somebody's bluff means to challenge them to prove it. Note double bluff; and a separate adjective bluff, meaning blunt and hearty in manner.
1verbbluffTo pretend to a strength or knowledge you do not have.
“He bluffed for about ten minutes and got away with it.”
2nounattemptAn attempt to deceive by pretending.
“It was a bluff and somebody called it.”
bluff is a pretence.
Dutch bluffen meant to brag or to swell up. The card sense came through American poker in the nineteenth century, and the sea cliff called a bluff is a different word entirely from the same Dutch source, meaning broad and flat.
Middle Dutch
bluffen — to make something swell; to bluff
Dutch
bluffen — to brag
English, today
bluff
Built from
Probably from Dutch bluffen (“to brag”), from Middle Dutch bluffen (“to make something swell; to bluff”); or from the - noun bluf (“bragging”). Related to German verblüffen (“to stump, perplex”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Games & Toys