Word.ws English Dictionary

tipping the gaff

tipping the gaff is the present participle and gerund of tip the gaff.

Meaning of tip the gaff

Verb

tip the gaff (third-person singular simple present tips the gaff, present participle tipping the gaff, simple past and past participle tipped the gaff)

  1. To give away how a magic trick is accomplished.
    • Penn and Teller see their style as rejecting the assumption that “the people in the audience are ignorant savages who will fall at our feet and worship us for performing supernatural miracles.” Penn may enjoy describing the “Penn & Teller” approach to magic as tipping the gaff...1989, Calvin Trillin, “A Couple of Eccentric Guys”, in The New Yorker
  2. To reveal a disguise or something hidden.
    • 1914: The Smart Set: A Magazine of Cleverness, Volume 42, "The Parasite" by George Bronson-Howard
      Lady! She couldn't disguise herself as a lady with that Slavonic map of hers tipping the gaff, and those heavy hoofs of hers.

Questions about tipping the gaff

What is tipping the gaff the present participle and gerund of?
Tipping the gaff is the present participle and gerund of tip the gaff.

Words near tipping the gaff in the dictionary

  1. tipping points
  2. tipping someone's velvet
  3. tipping the balance
  4. tipping the daddle
  5. tipping the double
  6. tipping the gaff
  7. tipping the scale
  8. tipping the scales
  9. tipping the wink
  10. tipping up
  11. tipping-point state

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tipping the gaff (page history and authors); tip the gaff (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: “tipping the gaff.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tipping_the_gaff. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.