whiff
Noun
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Noun
whiff (plural whiffs)
- A waft; a brief, gentle breeze; a light gust of air
- An odour carried briefly through the air
- 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room Chapter 2
- A whiff of rotten eggs had vanquished the pale clouded yellows which came pelting across the orchard and up Dods Hill and away on to the moor […]
- 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room Chapter 2
- A short inhalation or exhalation of breath, especially of smoke from a cigarette or pipe.
- The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe, / And a scornful laugh laughed he.
- (figurative) A slight sign of something; a glimpse.
- 2012, Ben Smith, Leeds United 2-1 Everton
- This was a rare whiff of the big-time for a club whose staple diet became top-flight football for so long—the glamour was in short supply, however. Thousands of empty seats and the driving Yorkshire rain saw to that.
- 2012, Frank Underwood, House of Cards
- I can tell you first-hand that we are dealing with a regime that is not being forthright and will seize upon the faintest whiff of trepidation. This is a test to see how far they can push us before we breake.
- 2012, Ben Smith, Leeds United 2-1 Everton
- (baseball) A strike (from the batter’s perspective)
- (golf) An attempted shot that completely misses the ball.
- The megrim, a fish: Lepidorhombus boscii or Lepidorhombus whiffiagonis.
- French: cardine franche
- Russian: мегрим
- Spanish: gallo, gallo del norte (L. whiffiagonis), gallo de cuatro manchas (L. boscii)
whiff (whiffs, present participle whiffing; past and past participle whiffed)
- (transitive) To waft.
- (transitive) To sniff.
- (intransitive, baseball) To strike out.
- (golf) To miss the ball completely.
- (slang) To attempt to strike and miss, especially being off-balance/vulnerable after missing.
- To throw out in whiffs; to consume in whiffs; to puff.
- To carry or convey by a whiff, or as by a whiff; to puff or blow away.
- 1620, Ben Jonson, News from the New World Discovered in the Moon
- Old Empedocles, […] who, when he leaped into Etna, having a dry, sear body, and light, the smoke took him, and whift him up into the moon.
- 1620, Ben Jonson, News from the New World Discovered in the Moon
- (colloquial) To have or give off a strong, unpleasant smell.
- Russian: дуть
- Russian: принюхиваться
whiff
- (colloquial) Having a strong or unpleasant odor.
- 2002: Jim Rozen, Way oil in rec.crafts.metalworking ↗
- Whoo boy that gear oil is pretty whiff. If you actually do this, spend the extra money for the synthetic gear oil as it will not have as bad a sulfur stink as the regular stuff.
- 2002: Jim Rozen, Way oil in rec.crafts.metalworking ↗
whiff (whiffs, present participle whiffing; past and past participle whiffed)
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.003