Word.ws English Dictionary

fluff

UK/flʌf/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/flɐf/

fluff noun: anything light, soft or fuzzy, especially fur, hair, feathers.

fluff: anything light, soft or fuzzy, especially fur, hair, feathers
Image: Ross Little, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

fluff (countable and uncountable, plural fluffs)

  1. Anything light, soft or fuzzy, especially fur, hair, feathers.
    • [W]hen I walk in my fields I can see, down Berwick way, the little fluffs of white smoke which tell me of this strange new hundred-legged beast, with coals for food and a thousand men in its belly, for ever crawling over the border.1892, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “[The Great Shadow] The Right of the Beacons”, in The Great Shadow and Beyond the City, Bristol: J. W. Arrowsmith, […]; London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co....
    Synonyms:
    fuzz, oose, puff
  2. Anything inconsequential or superficial.
    • That article was basically a bunch of fluff. It didn't say anything substantive.
    Synonyms:
    BS, cruft, hype, all talk
  3. (informal) A lapse or mistake, especially a mistake in an actor's lines.
  4. (informal, slang) A cloth diaper.
  5. (New-England) Marshmallow creme.
    • That New England-style salami and fluff sandwich sure hit the spot!
  6. A passive partner in a lesbian relationship.
    Synonyms:
    ruffle
  7. (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, euphemistic) A fart.
  8. (slang) Fan fiction, or part of a fan fiction, which is sweet and feel-good in tone, usually involving romance.
    • And when something triggers, I can close the window and go read fluff for hours until I calm down.2011, anonymous, quoted in Katherine Larsen & Lynn Zubernis, Fandom at the Crossroads: Celebration, Shame and Fan/producer Relationships, page 138
    • Fans prefer fluff to other types of fic. But angst (dramatic stories where characters have a wide range of emotions, including...angsty ones) comes in close second.2017, "Flourish Kink", quoted in Ashley J. Barner, The Case for Fanfiction: Exploring the Pleasures and Practices of a Maligned Craft, page 67
  9. (UK, roleplaying games) A form of roleplaying which is inconsequential and not related to the plot; often used in the context of (but not limited to) filling time.
  10. (UK, obsolete, slang) Short change deliberately given by a railway clerk, to keep back money for himself.
    • "What?" cried the counter-man, indignantly. "Been a railwayman all these years, and don't know what fluff is? Why, 'pon me word, you deserve to get the sack!"1900, The Railway Magazine, volume 7, page 560

Verb

fluff (third-person singular simple present fluffs, present participle fluffing, simple past and past participle fluffed)

  1. (transitive) To make something fluffy.
    • The cat fluffed its tail.
  2. (intransitive) To become fluffy, puff up.
  3. (intransitive) To move lightly like fluff.
    • She gave the music-stool a twirl or two and fluffed down on to it like a whirl of soap-suds in a hand-basin.1872, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Poet at the Breakfast-Table
  4. (informal, intransitive, transitive) To make a mistake in one's lines.
    Synonyms:
    flub
  5. (informal, transitive) To do incorrectly, for example mishit, miskick, miscue etc.
    • Either side of Rooney's fluffed chance, it was a tale of Ukrainian domination as they attacked England down both flanks and showed the greater fluidity of the teams.2012 June 19, Phil McNulty, “England 1-0 Ukraine”, in BBC Sport
    Synonyms:
    flub
  6. (Australia, euphemistic, intransitive) To break wind, to fart.
  7. (slang, transitive) To arouse (a male pornographic actor) before filming.
    • To get Lance Bronson hard, Chi Chi, in desperation, called Sharon Kane to come and fluff him on the set. People were always asking me how they could get a job as a fluffer.2008, Blue Blake, Out of the Blue: Confessions of an Unlikely Porn Star, page 187
  8. (broadly, slang, transitive) To bring to a state of excitement.
    • The warmup guy — as I now know is common for live audiences in taped television performances — kept fluffing the crowd like they were preschoolers.
      “Now what are you going to do when we introduce the first comedian?”
      Wild cheers.
      “C'mon, that's not good enough! Let's try it again! What are you...2016, Doug Stanhope, Digging Up Mother
  9. (UK, obsolete, slang) To deliberately shortchange (a railway customer) and keep the money for oneself.
    • A genial counter-man told Mr. Manners that, if he played artful, he might even now obtain the position of outside porter; you got no pay there, but you could gain a moderate competency by fluffing.1900, The Railway Magazine, volume 7, page 559

fluff meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada

fluff in Hindi

fluff, fiber
तूल tūl

fluff in Tamil

கூளம்

fluff in Malayalam

മൃദുരോമം, കളിയിലെ നിയമലംഘനം, ഉണ്ടയാകുക, തെറ്റായ അഭിനയം

fluff in Kannada

ನವಿರು ಗರಿ, ಗುಂಜ

Examples of fluff in a sentence

  • Fluff up the pillows to get the bed ready for guests.
  • Sew the hooky half of the Velcro on the inner side so that it doesn't pick up fluff.
  • That filthy man stole my fluffing purse!

All 40 example sentences with fluff

Synonyms of fluff

13 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of fluff

Forms of fluff

Noun
pluralfluffs
Verb
third-person singular presentfluffs
present participlefluffing
past participlefluffed
pastfluffed

Plural of fluff: fluffs

Origin of fluff

From earlier floow (“woolly substance, down, nap, lint”), also spelt flough, flue, and flew, from West Flemish vluwe, of uncertain ultimate origin: * Compare Old English flōh (“that which is flown off, fragment, piece”); see flaw * Possibly representing a blend of flue + puff; compare Middle Dutch vloe, or perhaps onomatopoeic; compare dialectal English floose, flooze, fleeze (“particles of wool or cotton; fluff; loose threads or fibres”), Danish fnug (“down, fluff”), Swedish fnugg (“speck, flake”). * Alternatively, West Flemish vluwe may derive from French velu (“hairy, furry”), from Latin villūtus (“having shaggy hair”), from villus (“shaggy hair, tuft of hair”). For words of similar sound and meaning in other languages, compare Japanese フワフワ (fuwafuwa, “lightly, softly”), Hungarian puha (“soft, fluffy”), Polish puchaty (“soft, fluffy”), Romanian puf (“down, peachfuzz, soft hair of some animals, powderpuff”).

Words formed from fluff

Phrases with fluff

Words that rhyme with fluff

27 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about fluff

What does fluff mean?
Fluff means anything light, soft or fuzzy, especially fur, hair, feathers.
What is fluff in Hindi?
Fluff in Hindi is तूल (tūl). See Fluff meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is fluff?
Fluff can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce fluff?
Fluff is pronounced /flʌf/ (UK).
What is the plural of fluff?
The plural of fluff is fluffs.

Words near fluff in the dictionary

  1. fluework
  2. fluey
  3. flufenacet
  4. flufenamic acid
  5. flufenoxuron
  6. fluff
  7. fluff about
  8. fluff bunnies
  9. fluff bunny
  10. fluff girl
  11. fluff girls

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fluff (page history and authors); तूल (Hindi) (page history and authors); fluff (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); fluff (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); fluff (Kannada 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: EN-AU ck1 fluff.ogg.

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