Huff

How to spell huff

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce huff

What does huff mean?

1. nounA passing fit of anger, irritation, or wounded pride.
2. verbTo breathe out noisily, often through tiredness or indignation.

Huff in a sentence

• noun

  He stormed out of the meeting in a huff when his idea was rejected.

• verb

  The runners began to huff and pant as they climbed the steep hill.

• noun

  She left the office in a huff after the argument over the schedule.

• verb

  He would huff loudly every time he had to carry the boxes upstairs.

Where does huff come from?

Language of origin: Other

Huff began life in the early 1500s as an imitative word, coined to echo the sound of a sharp, forceful breath being pushed out of the mouth. Words formed this way are called onomatopoeic, meaning they imitate the noise they describe, much as 'puff' and 'whoosh' do. From the literal sense of blowing or panting, the word quickly took on a figurative meaning, since an indignant person tends to exhale loudly when annoyed, and so 'in a huff' came to describe a fit of bad temper or wounded pride. The double 'f' simply follows the common English pattern for short, blunt monosyllables ending in that sound, such as 'cuff', 'gruff' and 'stuff'. Because the spelling matches the way the word sounds, the main trap is simply remembering that the final 'f' is doubled rather than left single.

How the word is built

• huff (imitative root mimicking a forceful, indignant breath); no prefix or suffix