Puff

How to spell puff

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce puff

What does puff mean?

1. nounA short, sudden burst of air, breath, smoke, steam, or wind.
2. verbTo breathe in short, heavy bursts, or to emit small bursts of smoke or steam.

Puff in a sentence

• noun

  A sudden puff of wind scattered the papers across the desk.

• verb

  He began to puff heavily after climbing the steep staircase.

• noun

  With one puff she blew out every candle on the cake.

• verb

  The old steam engine would puff loudly as it left the platform.

Where does puff come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Puff is an imitative word, meaning it began life as a direct imitation of the sound made by a short, sharp expulsion of breath. It traces back to Old English pyf and the verb pyffan, describing the act of blowing out air, and it has close cousins in other Germanic languages that all mimic the same soft, plosive noise. Because the word was born from sound rather than borrowed from a foreign root, its short, doubled spelling has stayed remarkably stable for centuries. Over time the meaning spread outward from the literal breath of air to small clouds of smoke or steam, to inflated swellings, and even to exaggerated praise, as in a 'puff piece'. The doubled f at the end is the only real spelling point to watch, since the single vowel keeps the clipped, abrupt sound the word was always meant to capture.

How the word is built

• puff (whole word, imitative of the sound of a quick breath); no prefix or suffix