Word.ws English Dictionary

raff

/ɹæf/

raff noun: a disorderly heap; a jumble; a large quantity.

Noun (1)

raff (countable and uncountable, plural raffs)

  1. (dated) A disorderly heap; a jumble; a large quantity
    • A raff of errors.1680, Isaac Barrow, A Discourse Concerning The Unity Of The Church
    • Bowditch and I (with a raff of books) left town about five in the morning.1825 September 2, Charles Francis Barnard, diary entry
  2. (dated) lumber or refuse.
    • [a hut] was fashioned of the raff of the slough—dead fronds, rotting branches, withered marsh grasses. Its sad gray-green were in the living wilderness like a monument to death.1923, Joel Townsley Rogers, Weird Tales, Hark! The Rattle!
    Synonyms:
    flotsam
  3. (plural, uncountable) The common rabble or mob; riffraff.
    • Jostling with unemployed labourers of the lowest class, ballast-heavers, coal-whippers, brazen women, ragged children, and the raff and refuse of the river, he makes his way with difficulty along […]1839, Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
  4. (dated) A common, crass or low-standing person. Alternatively, a snob.
    • English raffs of every description1860 June 30, Charles Dickens, All the Year Round
    • There is no town of any mark in Europe but it has its little colony of English raffs—men whose names Mr. Hemp the officer reads out periodically at the Sheriffs' Court—young gentlemen of very good family often, only that the latter disowns them; frequenters of billiard-rooms and estaminets, patrons...1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 64, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    churl

Verb

raff (third-person singular simple present raffs, present participle raffing, simple past and past participle raffed)

  1. (dated) To sweep, blow, snatch, draw, or huddle together; to sweep up.
    • Causes and effects which I thus raffe up together.1609, Richard Carew, The Survey of Cornwall, London: […] S[imon] S[tafford] for Iohn Iaggard, […], →OCLC
    • they felt no effect of the storm which was raffing at Madrass1861, Robert Orme, A History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan/Volume 1/Book 1

Noun (2)

raff (plural raffs)

  1. A three-cornered sail set on a schooner when before the wind.

Proper noun capitalized: Raff

Raff (plural Raffs)

  1. A surname.
  2. (UK, slang) The RAF (Royal Air Force).
    • in the Raff
  3. A nickname for Raphael or similar sounding names.

raff meaning in Urdu

raff in Urdu

البیلا, بانکا

Examples of raff in a sentence

  • There is no town of any mark in Europe but it has its little colony of English raffs—men whose names Mr.1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 64, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848...
  • the summer wind flows aloft through the tree-tops, or raffs the last year's leaves in the pits between the gnarled roots1898 June 2, The Independent (New York City), We Will Make Holiday:

Synonyms of raff

Forms of raff

Noun
pluralraffs
alternative formraffe
alternative formraffie
Verb
third-person singular presentraffs
present participleraffing
past participleraffed
pastraffed
Proper noun
pluralRaffs

Origin of raff

From Middle English raf, from Old French raffer, of Germanic origin; compare German raffen, akin to rap (“to snatch”). Compare riffraff, rip (“to tear”).

Words formed from raff

Questions about raff

What does raff mean?
Raff means a disorderly heap; a jumble; a large quantity.
What is raff in Urdu?
Raff in Urdu is البیلا, بانکا. See Raff meaning in Urdu.
How do you use raff in a sentence?
There is no town of any mark in Europe but it has its little colony of English raffs—men whose names Mr.
What part of speech is raff?
Raff can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce raff?
Raff is pronounced /ɹæf/.
What is the plural of raff?
The plural of raff is raffs.

Words near raff in the dictionary

  1. RAFBF
  2. RAFC
  3. RAFCs
  4. Rafe
  5. Rafeiro do Alentejo
  6. raff
  7. Raffa
  8. Raffaele
  9. Raffaeles
  10. Raffaelesque
  11. Raffas

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: raff (page history and authors); Raff (page history and authors); raff (Urdu 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.

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

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