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''buff'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''buff'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260915190735-00-⌔

buff - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

buff (countable and uncountable, plural buffs)

  • Undyed leather from the skin of buffalo or similar animals.
    • ✤ […]; but is in a ſuite of buffe […]1
  • A tool, often one covered with buff leather, used for polishing.
  • A brownish yellow colour.
    • ✤ buff:
    • ✤ […] a Visage rough,2
    • ✤ His face changed from tan to buff.3
  • ✤ Deform’d, Unfeatur’d, and a Skin of Buff.
  • A military coat made of buff leather.
    • ✤ A diuell in an euerlaſting garment hath him;/On whoſe hard heart is button’d vp with ſteele:/A Feind, a Fairie, pittileſſe and ruffe:/A Wolfe, nay worſe, a fellow all in buffe […]1
  • (informal) A person who is very interested in a particular subject.
    • ✤ Synonyms: enthusiast, aficionado, amateur (literary); see also Thesaurus: fan
    • ✤ He’s a real history buff. He knows everything there is to know about the civil war.
  • (video games) A change introduced in a patch that makes a character, item, or attack stronger.
    • ✤ Antonym: nerf
  • (video games, roleplaying games) An effect that makes a character or item stronger.
    • ✤ Synonym: revamp
    • ✤ Antonyms: debuff, nerf
    • ✤ I just picked up an epic damage buff! Let’s go gank the other team!
  • (rail transport) Compressive coupler force that occurs during a slack bunched condition.
  • (colloquial) The bare skin.
    • ✤ *to strip to the buff *
    • ✤ To be in buff, is equivalent to being naked.4
    • ✤ Not to mention, nudity can be just plain convenient. “Laundry is minimal,” Schulte notes. It also doesn’t hurt that being in the buff spices up his workday.5
  • The greyish viscid substance constituting the buffy coat.
  • Any substance used to dilute (street) drugs in order to increase profits.
    • ✤ Police say this 20 ton hydraulic jack was used to press mixtures of cocaine and “buff” into brick.6

Adjective

buff (comparativebuffer or more buff, superlativebuffest or most buff)

  • Of the color of buff leather, a brownish yellow.
  • (originally bodybuilding, colloquial) Unusually muscular.
    • ✤ Synonyms: buffed, buffed out
    • ✤ The bouncer was a big, buff dude with tattoos, a shaved head, and a serious scowl.
  • (MLE slang) Physically attractive.
    • ✤ That’s right: I’m taking driver’s ed next semester. Hiring an interpreter for CHS and the deaf school outta my own hefty pockets. You’re welcome. Oh, and I’m going to get really skinny and buff. All slim like a swimsuit model.7

Verb

buff (third-person singular simple present buffs, present participle buffing, simple past and past participle buffed)

  • To polish and make shiny by rubbing.
    • ✤ Synonyms: wax, shine, polish, furbish, burnish
    • ✤ He was already buffing the car’s hubs.
  • (video games, roleplaying games) To make a character or an item stronger.
    • ✤ Antonyms: debuff, nerf
    • ✤ The enchanter buffed the paladin to prepare him to fight the dragon.
    • ✤ I noticed that the pistols were buffed in the update.
  • (medical slang) To modify a medical chart, especially in a dishonest manner.
    • ✤ “Sure thing, I buffed her, and they turfed her to urology, but she bounced back to me!” […] They attempted to transfer her to urology by modifying her chart (buffing it) to request urine tests, but the doctors in urology sent (bounced) her back.8
    • ✤ The implication of such an action is an invitation to buff the chart. The medical records department could have prevented the falsification by sending a copy of the chart to the attorney at the same time that they notified the hospital physician of the attorney’s request for the chart.9
  • (graffiti slang) To remove (graffiti), particularly when done by someone who is not a graffiti writer.
  • (slang, transitive, archaic) To strip to the bare skin.

Verb

buff (third-person singular simple present buffs, present participle buffing, simple past and past participle buffed)

  • To strike.
    • ✤ Bravely run Red-hood,/There was a shock,/To have buff’d out the blood/From ought but a block.10

Noun

buff (plural buffs)

  • (obsolete) A strike; a blow.
    • ✤ Nathless so sore a buff to him it lent/That made him reel.11
    • ✤ A man must consider what a blind-man’s- buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect I anticipate your argument.12

Verb

buff (third-person singular simple present buffs, present participle buffing, simple past and past participle buffed)

  • (dialectal or obsolete) To stammer, stutter

Noun

buff (countable and uncountable, plural buffs)

  • (informal) A buffalo, or the meat of a buffalo.
    • ✤ […] diced buff (buffalo) meat, usually heavily spiced […]13
    • ✤ You will eat water buffalo meat and drink boiled water buffalo milk: buff burgers at Aunt Jane’s restaurant, buff mo-mos which are the Tibetan won-tons, and buff steaks at The Globe.14

Noun

buff (plural buffs)

  • (uncommon) Alternative form of buffe (“face armor”).
    • ✤ For they had helmets on their heads, fashioned like wild beast’s necks, and strange beavers or buffs to the same, and wore on their helmets great high plumes of feathers, as they had been wings: […]15

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA: /bʌf/
  • (Australia, New Zealand) IPA: /bɐf/
    • Audio (Australia): 🔊
  • (Northern England) IPA: /bʊf/
  • Rhymes: -ʌf

Etymology 1

From buffe (“leather”), from Middle French buffle (“buffalo”).

Etymology 2

From Old French bufer (“to cuff, buffet”). See buffet (“a blow”).

Etymology 3

From Middle English buffen (“to stutter, stammer”), from Old English byffan (“to mumble, mutter”), from Proto-West Germanic ﹡bubjaną, from Proto-Indo-European ﹡bʰeyH- (“to fear, to be afraid”). More at bive (“tremble, shake”) and bever.

Etymology 4

Clipping of buffalo.

Etymology 5

Printed 2026-09-15.

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Footnotes

  1. c. 1594 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Comedie of Errors”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii], page 94: ↩ ↩2

  2. 1693, John Dryden (translator), The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis Translated into English Verse, London: Jacob Tonson, Satire 10, lines 307-308, p. 203, ↩

  3. 1929, Dashiell Hammett, chapter 24, in Red Harvest ‎: ↩

  4. 1880, Thomas Wright, “buff”, in Dictionary of obsolete and provincial English, containing words from the English writers previous to the nineteenth century which are no longer in use, or are not used in the same sense. And words which are now used only in the provincial dialects ‎, volume 1, London: George Bell and Sons, page 265: ↩

  5. 2021 October 18, Ian Lecklitzner, “The Inevitable Rise of the Work-From-Home Nudist”, in MEL Magazine ‎: ↩

  6. 2014, “Aldergrove’s 856 gang busted, ^{[5]}$ ↩

  7. 2011, Josh Berk, The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin, Random House Digital, Inc., →ISBN, page 244: ↩

  8. 1996, Jeffrey E. Nash, James M. Calonico, The Meaning of Social Interaction: An Introduction to Social Psychology ‎, page 139: ↩

  9. 2004, Gregory Davis, Pathology and Law ‎, page 121: ↩

  10. a. 1640, Ben Jonson, The Under-wood ‎, page 277: ↩

  11. 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 6: ↩

  12. 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”, in Essays: First Series: ↩

  13. 2006, Bradley Mayhew, Joe Bindloss, Stan Armington, Nepal: ↩

  14. 1992, Marilyn Stablein, The Census Taker: Stories of a Traveler in India and Nepal, page 62: ↩

  15. 1899, Selected Lives (orig. by Plutarch), page 317: ↩

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