bluff

adj

Etymology: Related to Middle Low German blaff (“smooth”).

1. Having a broad, flattened front.

   “the bluff bows of a ship”

2. Rising steeply with a flat or rounded front.

   “a bluff or bold shore”

   “Its banks, if not really steep, had a bluff and precipitous aspect.”

3. Surly; churlish; gruff; rough.

   “[…] he had a bluff, rough-and-ready face, all roughened and reddened and lined in his long travels.”

4. Roughly frank and hearty in one's manners.

   “a bluff answer”

   “a bluff manner of talking”

name

1. A place in the United States:
2. A place in the United States:
3. A place in the United States:
4. A place in the United States:
5. A place in the United States:
6. A group of suburbs in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
7. A rural town in the Central Highlands Region, Queensland, Australia.
8. A town in Southland, New Zealand, the southernmost in the South Island, and seaport for the Southland region.

   “Former name: Campbelltown”

9. A surname.

noun

Etymology: Related to Middle Low German blaff (“smooth”).

1. A high, steep bank, for example by a river or the sea, or beside a ravine or plain; a cliff with a broad face.

   “In the sketch (which is taken about 75 Jovian days after that of the 2nd July) there is shown a dark copper-coloured streak along the southern margin of the south brown belt, butting on to a bluff-headed streak of cumulus cloud which may be the same remarkable bluff head noticed on July 2.”

   “It seems there was a worm that slept upon a pile of treasure, which it had zealously heaped up under a stone bluff.”

2. A small wood or stand of trees, typically poplar or willow.

verb

Etymology: Possibly onomatopoeic, perhaps related to blow and puff.

1. To fluff, puff or swell up.

   “Not a sparrow on the cottage thatch, where the chimney's warmth had thawed the snow, that did not seem to have his great coat on, so bluffed out were the feathers, and not a frozen-out duck who did not glance up at the icicles hanging to the roof, and quack a prayer for rain.”

   “[W]hen the bare boughs of a tree intervened between her and the rising bright but deep red sun, frosted as the twigs were, on them sat a merry flock of sparrows, the feathers on their breasts bluffed out, as if they had donned warm winter spencers to shield them from the biting blast.”