toruffle
Pronunciation
  • IPA: /təˈɹʌfəl/
Verb

toruffle (toruffles, present participle toruffling; past and past participle toruffled)

  1. (transitive, archaic) To ruffle excessively, to the degree of causing something to lose its proper form or shape; ruffle up.
    • 1634 October 9 (first performance), [John Milton], H[enry] Lawes, editor, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […] [Comus], London: Printed [by Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey Robinson, […], published 1637, OCLC 228715864 ↗; reprinted as Comus: […] (Dodd, Mead & Company’s Facsimile Reprints of Rare Books; Literature Series; no. I), New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903, OCLC 1113942837 ↗:
      She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings / That in the various bustle of resort / Were all toruffl'd, and sometimes impair'd.



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