Meaning of puff in English

puff

verb

/pʌf/ us

/pʌf/

puff verb (BREATHE)

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[ I ]

to breathe fast and with difficulty, usually because you have been exercising:

He came puffing up the stairs.

[ + speech ] "I ran all the way home," she puffed (= said while puffing).

puff and pant

to breathe fast and with difficulty, usually because you have been exercising

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Animal physiology: breathing & stopping breathing

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puff verb (SMOKE)

[ I or T ]

to smoke tobacco:

She was puffing on a cigarette at the time.

He sat there, puffing away at a cigarette.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Tobacco & smoking

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puff verb (BLOW)

[ I or T ]

to blow out in clouds, or make steam or smoke do this:

The engine puffed a huge cloud of steam, then rolled down the tracks.

The chimney was puffing out clouds of smoke.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Emitting and ejecting

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Phrasal verbs

puff something out
puff up
puff someone/something up
puff something up

puff

noun

/pʌf/ us

/pʌf/

puff noun (SMALL AMOUNT)

[ C ]

a small amount of smoke, air, or something that can rise into the air in a small cloud:

Sean blew a puff of smoke at his reflection in the mirror.

He hit the ground with his stick and a puff of dust rose up into the air.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Precipitation: clouds, dew, fog & steam

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puff noun (FOOD)

[ C ]

a piece of food made of puff pastry filled with something sweet or with food such as cheese:

a cream/jam puff

cheese puffs

tanukiphoto/iStock/Getty Images Plus/Getty Images /GettyImages

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Pastry & pies

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puff noun (PRAISE)

[ C ] informal mainly disapproving

(US also puff piece)

a piece of writing or speech that praises something too much

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Praising and applauding

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puff noun (BREATHE)

be out of puff UK informal

to be breathing with difficulty because you have been doing physical exercise

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Animal physiology: breathing & stopping breathing

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puff noun (SMOKING)

[ C ]

an act of smoking:

She took a puff on her cigarette and thought for a moment.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Tobacco & smoking

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Idiom

vanish/go up/disappear in a puff of smoke

(Definition of puff from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

puff | American Dictionary

puff

verb

/pʌf/

puff verb (BREATHE)

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[ I ]

to breathe quickly and with a lot of force, usually as a result of an activity that needs a lot of physical effort:

Ricardo was puffing hard after he raced up five flights of stairs.

[ I ]

To puff is also to breathe in and blow out smoke from a cigarette, cigar (= rolled tobacco), or pipe (= device for smoking).

puff verb (SWELL)

[ I/T ]

to swell or increase in size:

[ T ] One eye was puffed and her cheek was bruised dark as a coal smear.

[ T ] The child held a deep breath and puffed her cheeks until they turned red.

puff

noun [ C ]

/pʌf/

puff noun [C] (SMALL BURST)

a small burst of smoke, air, or something that can rise into the air in a small cloud:

We felt a puff of wind as the door open and closed.

puff noun [C] (CAKE)

a small, round cake or other food, esp. one made from pastry with a filling inside:

a cream puff

puff noun [C] (BREATHE)

an act of puffing out air, often with a soft sound

A puff is also an act of breathing in and blowing out smoke.

(Definition of puff from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

puff | Business English

puff

noun [ C ]

MARKETING

/pʌf/ us

(also US puff piece)

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a piece of writing that praises or advertises a product:

They asked me to write a puff for her latest book.

a puff (piece) on sth He's gone to New York to do a puff piece on a starlet.

puff

verb [ T ]

MARKETING

/pʌf/ us

to praise or advertise a product in order to increase sales:

He was at the festival to puff his new movie.

(Definition of puff from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of puff

puff

X-ray emission from laser irradiated gas puff targets.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In symbolizing the body's physical permeability, the powder puff became a proxy for the instability of the social body at large.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

By allowing men to cross social boundaries the powder puff suggested just how fragile they were.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The qualitative agreement between the two sets of data suggests that the present transitional flow can be regarded as a 'puff '-type flow.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The plume width is assumed to be equal to the width of a corresponding puff, which may not be correct.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Spatially resolved spectrograph confirms better axial uniformity with solid-fill gas puff.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

To test the effect of nicotine application on maintained rate, nicotine was bath or puff applied without concurrent light stimulation.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

After the interview, the second saliva sample was collected, 20 - 30 min after the first air puff of the fear-potentiated startle paradigm.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

However, their initial puff is larger than the integral scale, so the experiment is not relevant for relative diffusion within inertial-subrange distances.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The rules just stated have been recognized and applied in several previous studies of the turbulent puff or the turbulent vortex ring.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In contrast, the gas puff loads do show a systematic zipper.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

In all nozzle configurations, the outer shell was an annular gas puff, while the inner shell was a solid fill.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The gas puff target is formed by pulsed injection of a small amount of gas under high-pressure into a laser focus region.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The electromagnetic valve system equipped with a double-nozzle setup to form new gas puff targets is presented and characterized.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

However, glutamate puff responses were not affected (n 3).

From the Cambridge English Corpus

See all examples of puff

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

What is the pronunciation of puff?