ruff

UK/ɹʌf/US/ɹəf/

nounC2Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,452 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: ruffs

A ruff is a stiff frilled collar worn in earlier centuries. A starched ruff, wear a ruff, the ruff of a portrait.

It was the mark of Elizabethan wealth and grew absurd: the largest needed a wire frame to hold them up and made eating difficult. A ruff is also a band of feathers or fur round an animal's neck, and in cards it means to play a trump.

Definitions of ruff

1nounruffA stiff frilled collar worn in earlier centuries.C2
“In the old portrait, the queen wears a huge white ruff around her neck.”

ruff is a collar.

Where it comes from

Probably a clipping of ruffle, or from rough. The collar and the ruffle are the same idea.

a clipping of ruffle, or possibly from rough.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

ruff in the wild

The ruff (Calidris pugnax) is a medium-sized wading bird that breeds in marshes and wet meadows across northern Eurasia.
Ruff (bird)
In trick-taking games, to ruff means to play a trump card to a trick (other than when trumps were led).
Ruff (cards)
According to the rules of most games, a player must have no cards left in the suit led in order to ruff.
Ruff (cards)
A ruff is an item of clothing popular in Western, Central and Northern Europe, as well as Spanish America, from the mid-16th century to the mid-17th century.
Ruff (clothing)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

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