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TUFT
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A bunch of feathers or hair
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("tuft" is a kind of...):
crest (a showy growth of e.g. feathers or skin on the head of a bird or other animal)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A bunch of hair or feathers or growing grass
Synonyms:
tuft; tussock
Classified under:
Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects
Hypernyms ("tuft" is a kind of...):
bunch; clump; cluster; clustering (a grouping of a number of similar things)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "tuft"):
wisp (a small tuft or lock)
hexenbesen; staghead; witch broom; witches' broom (an abnormal tufted growth of small branches on a tree or shrub caused by fungi or insects or other physiological disturbance)
coma ((botany) a usually terminal tuft of bracts (as in the pineapple) or tuft of hairs (especially on certain seeds))
Context examples:
I found the island to be all rocky, only a little intermingled with tufts of grass, and sweet-smelling herbs.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Curious glassy gray eyes they have, under red tufts, and they just sat and gloated and gloated.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
On he clambered, with his hand shuffling down the long sloping crack, sometimes bearing all his weight upon his arms, at others finding some small shelf or tuft on which to rest his foot.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
It was the same with his hair, sparse and irregular of growth, muddy-yellow and dirty-yellow, rising on his head and sprouting out of his face in unexpected tufts and bunches, in appearance like clumped and wind-blown grain.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
Through the thin haze of my cigar-smoke I noted the details of a face which was already familiar to me from many photographs—the strongly-curved nose, the hollow, worn cheeks, the dark, ruddy hair, thin at the top, the crisp, virile moustaches, the small, aggressive tuft upon his projecting chin.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
With his long beak-like nose and his single gleaming eye, which shone brightly from under a thick tuft of grizzled brow, he seemed to Alleyne to have something of the look of some fierce old bird of prey.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
His tufts of ears had become tassels, his neck and shoulders were slashed in a score of places, and his very lips were cut and bleeding—all from these lightning snaps that were beyond his foreseeing and guarding.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
Aylward and Johnston had been engaged in throwing light tufts of grass into the air to gauge the wind force, and a hoarse whisper passed down the ranks from the file-leaders to the men, with scraps of advice and admonition.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
