Word.ws English Dictionary

riffed

riffed is the simple past and past participle of riff.

riffed is the simple past and past participle of rif.

Meaning of riff

Verb

riff (third-person singular simple present riffs, present participle riffing, simple past and past participle riffed)

  1. To improvise in the performance or practice of an art, especially by expanding on or making novel use of traditional themes.
    • She riffed on the Olympic judges, the bobsled team, then ad-libbed with a woman drinking a martini at the front table.2006, Janet Tashjian, Fault Line: A Novel, →ISBN
  2. To riffle.
    • He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a wellworn deck of cards. He hated Saturday duty. He cut the deck and riffed the two halves together.2010, Michael Flynn, In the Country of the Blind, →ISBN
  3. To tell jokes over a movie or similar performance.
    • Most MSTers confine their "riffing" to original fan fiction rather than scripts from corporate-owned entertainment properties, which renders such twice-removed MSTing somewhat toothless: the cannibalizing parody of a pastiche.2014 January 10, Robert G. Weiner, Shelley E. Barba, In the Peanut Gallery with Mystery Science Theater 3000: Essays on Film, Fandom, Technology and the Culture of Riffing, McFarland, →ISBN, page 126
    Synonyms:
    MST

See all 8 meanings of riff

Adjective

riffed (not comparable)

  1. Who has lost a job due to a RIF (reduction in force).
    • Several ships could be sunk by the copious tears being shed by riffed reservists.1958, Air Force Magazine - Volume 41, page 86
    • Riffed teachers are unlikely to return to teaching, for they often have found other challenging, financially rewarding work that they might otherwise never have tried.1987, Nathalie Jean Gehrke, On being a teacher, page 93

Questions about riffed

What does riffed mean?
Riffed means who has lost a job due to a RIF (reduction in force).
What is riffed the simple past and past participle of?
Riffed is the simple past and past participle of riff.
What part of speech is riffed?
Riffed is an adjective.

Words near riffed in the dictionary

  1. riff
  2. riff-raff
  3. riff-raffs
  4. riff-raffy
  5. riffage
  6. riffed
  7. Riffel
  8. Riffels
  9. riffer
  10. rifferama
  11. Riffey

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: riffed (page history and authors); riff (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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Cite this entry: “riffed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/riffed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.