snuffy
/ˈsnʌfi/
snuffy adjective: soiled with snuff.
Adjective
snuffy (comparative snuffier, superlative snuffiest)
- Soiled with snuff.
- Resembling or characteristic of snuff.
- Sulky; angry; vexed.
- I must now let you know what sort of a personage this same First President is; you imagine that he is a disagreeable snuffy old fellowMay 27 1680, Marchioness de Sévigné, letter to her daughter, published in English in 1745
- The postchaise contained a snuffy old dowager of seventy, with a maid, her contemporary.1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 3, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850...
- Drunk.
- She could fight, too, when I got snuffy. […] Once I come home from elk camp so drunk I couldn't hardly sit my horse, and Sylvie near to kilt me, she fought me so hard.2014, Howard Frank Mosher, North Country: A Personal Journey Through the Borderland
- That causes sniffing and nasal irritation due to dust.
- Giving that up, she took a broom and a duster and went upstairs to housemaid Mrs Dibble's bedroom, with her head tied up in a coloured scarf. It was a dusty, snuffy job, for penuriousness in Mrs Dibble refused to throw anything away, including dirt, and if anything fell on the floor it remained...1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 32
Forms of snuffy
| comparative | snuffier |
|---|---|
| superlative | snuffiest |
Origin of snuffy
From snuff + -y.
Words formed from snuffy
Words that rhyme with snuffy
Questions about snuffy
- What does snuffy mean?
- Snuffy means soiled with snuff.
- What part of speech is snuffy?
- Snuffy is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce snuffy?
- Snuffy is pronounced /ˈsnʌfi/.
Words near snuffy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: snuffy (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-snuffy.wav.
Cite this entry: “snuffy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/snuffy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
