Word.ws English Dictionary

snuffy

/ˈsnʌfi/

snuffy adjective: soiled with snuff.

Adjective

snuffy (comparative snuffier, superlative snuffiest)

  1. Soiled with snuff.
  2. Resembling or characteristic of snuff.
  3. (Scotland, obsolete) 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...
  4. (slang) 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
  5. 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

comparativesnuffier
superlativesnuffiest

Origin of snuffy

From snuff + -y.

Words formed from snuffy

Words that rhyme with snuffy

3 more rhymesFewer rhymes

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

  1. snufflings
  2. snuffly
  3. snuffs
  4. snuffs it
  5. snuffs out
  6. snuffy
  7. snufter
  8. snufters
  9. snug
  10. snug as a bug
  11. snug as a bug in a rug

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.

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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.