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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

huff.

A heavy breath; a grunt or sigh.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/hʌf/General-American, Received-Pronunciation/hɐf/Australia, New-Zealand/hʊf/Northern-England
  1. A heavy breath; a grunt or sigh.

    With a huff, he lifted the box onto the back of the truck.
  2. A condition of anger, annoyance, disgust, etc.

    figuratively
    in a huff
  3. One swelled with a false sense of importance or value; a boaster.

    obsolete
  4. The act of removing an opponent's piece as a forfeit for deliberately not taking a piece (often signalled by blowing on it).

Where this word comes from

Probably an altered spelling of earlier *hough, represented by Scots hech (“to breathe hard, pant”). Compare also German hauchen (“to breathe”).

verb/hʌf/General-American, Received-Pronunciation/hɐf/Australia, New-Zealand/hʊf/Northern-England
  1. To breathe heavily.

    intransitive
    The run left him huffing and puffing.
  2. To say in a huffy manner.

    intransitive
  3. To enlarge; to swell up.

    intransitive
    Bread huffs.
  4. To bluster or swell with anger, arrogance, or pride; to storm; to take offense.

    intransitive
  5. To treat with arrogance and insolence; to chide or rebuke rudely; to bully, to hector.

    transitive
  6. To vex; to offend.

    archaic · transitive
  7. To inhale psychoactive inhalants.

    transitive
  8. To remove an opponent's piece as a forfeit for deliberately not taking a piece (often signalled by blowing on it).

    transitive
Where this word comes from

Probably an altered spelling of earlier *hough, represented by Scots hech (“to breathe hard, pant”). Compare also German hauchen (“to breathe”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.