ziffs

Noun (1)

ziff (plural ziffs)

1. (Australia, New Zealand, dated, slang) A beard.
   • As for my trip to the Never Never, well, one lives and learns. I landed safely among a tribe of blacks, and asked an old buck with a white ziff if the 'Marys' of his tribe used paint and powder. He answered with an exceedingly broad nigger grin that 'they use'm charcoal.'1934 April 26, The Chronicle, Adelaide, page 59, column 2
   1. (Australia, New Zealand, dated, metonymically, slang) Someone with a beard, especially an old man.
      • Now he wanted to use electric heat, and electricity was found wanting, and he couldn't understand the difference. Surely if a thing would do all that he had made it do, it should be able to boil water—it was hard to think that "stuff" which some old "ziff" had discovered over a hundred years ago...1936 February, “Certain Things for Certain Jobs”, in American Gas Association Monthly, volume XVIII, number 2, New York, N.Y.: American Gas Association, →OCLC, page 61; republished from Australian...

Noun (2)

ziff (plural ziffs)

1. (UK, obsolete, slang) A juvenile thief.
   • […] Y was a Yoxter that eat caper sauce; / Z was a Ziff who was flashed on the horse.1846, George William MacArthur Reynolds, The Mysteries of London, page 60

See all 4 meanings of ziff