Word.ws English Dictionary

daffy

/ˈdæfi/

daffy adjective: somewhat mad or eccentric.

Adjective

daffy (comparative daffier, superlative daffiest)

  1. (colloquial) Somewhat mad or eccentric.
    • Now I'm hungry as a Rocky Mountain lion so come, let's go and get this poor, daffy, tealess widow and wine and dine with her and make it all up.1898 September 30, Willa Cather, The Westbound Train
    • "You've gone so plum daffy you are forgetting your dinner," jeered her mother.1909, Gene Stratton-Porter, chapter I, in A Girl of the Limberlost
    Synonyms:
    crazy, nutty, wacky

Noun (1)

daffy (plural daffies)

  1. (informal) A daffodil.

Noun (2)

daffy (uncountable)

  1. (UK, dated, slang) Gin.
    • “Do you give the children Daffy, Mrs. Mann?” inquired Bumble, following with his eyes the interesting process of mixing.1837-39, Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
    • […] he failed repeatedly until he took over his famous house in Haymarket, where for many years, surrounded by such admirers as Byron, Tom Moore and Hazlitt, he smoked his yard of clay, drained his glass of 'daffy', and […]1954, Denzil Batchelor, Big Fight: The Story of World Championship Boxing, page 44

Proper noun capitalized: Daffy

Daffy

  1. A diminutive of the female given name Daphne.
    • The name Daffy stuck, and to make it worse, Tony added "Duck" as an afterthought. For weeks, he led all the other kids in a chorus of quacks whenever Daphne appeared, but she ignored them.1983, Mary Downing Hahn, Daphne's Book, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, →ISBN, page 5
  2. A diminutive of the female given name Daffodil.
    • "Call me Daffy," Daffodil interrupted with a demure smile.1997, Emily Dalton, Wake Me With a Kiss, Harlequin, →ISBN, page 11
  3. A surname from Welsh, derived from the Welsh equivalent of David.

daffy meaning in Tamil

daffy in Tamil

இயல்பு மாறி

Examples of daffy in a sentence

  • He was daffy about her and she could twist him around her little finger.1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald, chapter IV, in O Russet Witch!:
  • Within Castle Tavern, at Holborn, Charles Perth and Lord Lucan were drowning their disparate sorrows in a glass of daffy.1991, Julie Caille, Change of Heart, page 255:

Synonyms of daffy

Forms of daffy

Adjective
comparativedaffier
superlativedaffiest
Noun
pluraldaffies

Origin of daffy

From daff + -y.

An allusion to an old medicine known as Daffy's Elixir.

Words formed from daffy

Phrases with daffy

Words that rhyme with daffy

Questions about daffy

What does daffy mean?
Daffy means somewhat mad or eccentric.
What is daffy in Tamil?
Daffy in Tamil is இயல்பு மாறி. See Daffy meaning in Tamil.
How do you use daffy in a sentence?
He was daffy about her and she could twist him around her little finger.
What part of speech is daffy?
Daffy can be an adjective, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce daffy?
Daffy is pronounced /ˈdæfi/ (UK).

Words near daffy in the dictionary

  1. daffodowndillies
  2. daffodowndilly
  3. Daffron
  4. Daffrons
  5. daffs
  6. daffy
  7. Daffy Duck
  8. Daffy Duck offense
  9. Daffy Ducks
  10. daffydowndillies
  11. daffydowndilly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: daffy (page history and authors); Daffy (page history and authors); daffy (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-daffy.wav.

Cite this entry: “daffy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/daffy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.