Word.ws English Dictionary

ruffling

ruffling noun: the action of the verb ruffle. Also the present participle and gerund of ruffle.

Noun

ruffling (plural rufflings)

  1. The action of the verb ruffle
    • Late in the morning I wak'd first; and observing my lover slept profoundly, softly disengag'd myself from his arms, scarcely daring to breathe for fear of shortening his repose; my cap, my hair, my shift, were all in disorder from the rufflings I had undergone1749, [John Cleland], “(Please specify the letter or volume)”, in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill], London: […] [Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton [i.e., Fenton and Ralph Griffiths] […], →OCLC

Also used as

ruffling is also the present participle and gerund of ruffle.

Forms of ruffling

pluralrufflings

Phrases with ruffling

Questions about ruffling

What does ruffling mean?
Ruffling means the action of the verb ruffle.
What part of speech is ruffling?
Ruffling is a noun.
What is the plural of ruffling?
The plural of ruffling is rufflings.

Words near ruffling in the dictionary

  1. ruffless
  2. rufflier
  3. ruffliest
  4. rufflike
  5. ruffliness
  6. ruffling
  7. ruffling a few feathers
  8. ruffling any feathers
  9. ruffling feathers
  10. ruffling some feathers
  11. ruffling someone's feathers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ruffling (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: “ruffling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ruffling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.