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Buff   Listen
noun
Buff  n.  A buffet; a blow; obsolete except in the phrase "Blindman's buff." See blindman's buff. "Nathless so sore a buff to him it lent That made him reel."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Buff" Quotes from Famous Books



... on!" shouted the enraptured Pat; "don't be throublin yesilf with questions; dear knows it's mesilf that's in it;" and his smiling face was mirrored in numerous brass buttons, which were hanging around his buff vest. ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale

... was received by a body of footmen dressed in a livery of blue and buff, in which they looked wonderfully like American Revolutionary generals, only bedizened with far more lace and embroidery than those simple and grand old heroes ever dreamed of wearing. There were likewise two very imposing figures, whom I should ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... washtubs, etc., offering admirable nooks for playing hide and seek. Two tallow candles threw a faint light over the scene on certain occasions. This cellar was on a level with a large kitchen where we played blind man's buff and other games when the day's work was done. These two rooms are the center of many of the merriest memories of ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... Virginia and Massachusetts led the colonies into the War for Independence. Side by side they founded the government of the United States. Morgan and Greene, Lee and Knox, Moultrie and Prescott, men of the South and men of the North, fought shoulder to shoulder, and wore the same uniform of buff and blue,—the uniform ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... the whole evening to music. After a while they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself. Stop! There was first a game at blind-man's buff. Of course there was. And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and Scrooge's nephew: and that the Ghost ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... to do here except go to school and play. My father keeps a store, and during the summer I worked for him. School began on the 4th of October. I have ten chickens, and am building a coop for them; and I have a very large cat named Buff. I am saving money ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... upon my mind, as I then saw him and loved him, I knew not why, and thought him so angelic and remarkable." That "blue nankeen" sounds strangely, it may be, to the readers of this later generation, but in the first quarter of the century blue and yellow or buff-colored cotton from China were a common summer clothing of children. The places where the factories and streets of the cities of Lowell and Lawrence were to rise were then open fields and farms. My recollection ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... to names, but in later years with only a glance at any specimen I could say, "Oh, yes! I always have known that. It has buff-coloured legs, clubbed antennae with buff tips, wings of purplish brown velvet with escalloped margins, a deep band of buff lightly traced with black bordering them, and a pronounced point close the apex of the front ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... Always careful about his personal appearance when he was to address an audience, he wore on that day the Whig uniform, which had been copied by the Revolutionary heroes—a blue dress- coat with bright buttons, a buff waistcoat, and a high, white cravat. Neither was he insensible to the benefits to be derived from publicity, and he had sent a request to Mr. Gales to report what he was to say himself, rather than to send one of his stenographers. The most graphic account of the scene in ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... cashmere shawl pinned over her plain gray lawn dress and a stiff black silk bonnet was tied under her chin. Amanda skipped out to the yard, wearing a white dress with a wide buff sash. A matching ribbon was tied on her ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers

... room, leaning on his cane. He had laid aside his buff and blue uniform, with the epaulets and sword knots, and was clad in a suit of silken black. His hose and shoes were of the same color, against which his blouse, cuffs and periwig were ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... wealth, and who intended to provide for the safeguarding of wealth after it was secured, could be such dolts as to allow themselves to be robbed of all their accumulated wealth by a device as simple as that by which children play at blindman's buff. The process was no more complex than that employed by the robber of old, who took the pebbles from the beach, marked them money, and with the money bought the labour of his fellows, and by the manipulation of that labour and by turning ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson

... Egyptian pottery known. Later in date are a red ware and a black ware with rude geometrical incised designs, imitating basketwork, and with the incised lines filled in with white. Later again is a buff ware, either plain or decorated with wavy lines, concentric circles, and elaborate drawings of boats sailing on the Nile, ostriches, fish, men ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... been very sweet. I do love you, Chris. I love you... I cannot tell you how. You are everything to me, and more besides. You remember that Christmas tree of the children?—when we played blindman's buff? and you caught me by the arm so, with such a clutching of fingers that I cried out with the hurt? I never told you, but the arm was badly bruised. And such sweet I got of it you could never guess. ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... pinkish-gray-buff, which may be called old ivory. It is not garish, as a dead white would be, especially in the strong California sunlight, but soft and restful to the eye. It harmonizes with the other colors selected, and, most important ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... fireplace hang some curious things—stags' horns, and weapons of bygone times, and among them a buff coat, an iron helmet, a cuirass, and two long straight swords, which evidently belonged to one of the gentlemen with flowing love-locks and broad collars turned down over their mail, whose portraits are hung on each side. But below these is a more modern helmet, such a helmet as ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue

... form a light coat of mail, pliant to the body; and a kind of casque of cedar bark, leather, and bear grass, sufficient to protect the head from an arrow or war club. A more complete article of defensive armor was a buff jerkin or shirt of great thickness, made of doublings of elk skin, and reaching to the feet, holes being left for the head and arms. This was perfectly arrowproof; add to which, it was often endowed with charmed virtues, by the spells and mystic ceremonials ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... want to know is, why a lady should have to strip to the buff just to play with a pigeon?" breathed John Flint, and his ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... buff, rose and orange, straw-color and lavender, surely not a tint was missing, and the result was absolutely comical! One would have thought that a ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks

... dropped the pair of horns that he had lost. He picked them up and boasted that if he blew on them the whole town would be at once destroyed. The bystanders laughed at him, whereupon he got angry and blew on the horns. Then there was a great noise and an enormous herd of wild buff aloes was seen rushing down to destroy the town. However before they could do any damage he ran out and assured them that he was unhurt; at this the buffaloes were pacified; then all the straw and grain in the ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas

... young friends came to see us, there was much rejoicing from brother Barnes, who was full of life and spirits, and always ready to play, and from Arminda and myself; but brother Horace, not at all allured by blind-man's-buff or a dance, would retire to a corner with a pine knot (for in those days candles were few), preferring the companionship of his book to our merry games. Coaxing was all in vain: the only means of inducing him to join us was to snatch away his book and hide it; but even then he preferred ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland

... the pleasantest fortnight in all my year of travel. Laddie appeared early, elegant to behold, in a new hat and buff gloves, and was immensely amused because the servant informed me that ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... dinner-parties, at the time I was at Quebec he gave evening parties to eighty or a hundred persons twice a-week, when the greatest sociability prevailed; and in addition to dancing, which was kept up on these occasions till two or three in the morning, games such as French blindman's-buff were introduced, to the great delight of both old and young. The pleasure with which this innovation was received by the lively and mirth-loving Canadians showed the difference in character between themselves and the ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... which Mr. Linton's office opened, and where that gentleman was presumably to be found, wrestling with the intricacies of his income-tax schedule—the squatter's yearly bugbear. Along this verandah came, slowly, Cecil, beautiful to behold in a loose brown suit, with buff coloured shirt and flowing orange tie. Wally cast a swift glance ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... a tap at the door, and Frank swung round. It was not the girl, but a telegraph boy. He snatched the buff envelope from the lad's hand and tore it ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace

... Or beneath the orchard's shadow, Keepest up a constant rattle Joyous as my children's prattle, Welcome to the north again! Welcome to mine ear thy strain, Welcome to mine eye the sight Of thy buff, thy black ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... is more rarely met with, was in bronze greens throughout, intermixed with yellow and about three shades of the dull blues. Black sometimes is to be noticed in both these colour schemes, also bright and buff yellows and chestnut browns, and the colours were mostly confined to the blue scheme first named, but there are examples extant of an entire design carried out in shades of red, as in the Tudor and early 16th ...
— Jacobean Embroidery - Its Forms and Fillings Including Late Tudor • Ada Wentworth Fitzwilliam and A. F. Morris Hands

... there! what's the matter?" was heard again; and this time a very red-faced grey-haired man, with the lower part of his features framed in white bristles, and clad in a blue pea-jacket and buff waistcoat, ornamented with gilt anchor buttons, stood suddenly in the doorway on the right, smoking solemnly a long churchwarden clay pipe, rilling his mouth very full of smoke, and then aggravating the looker-on by puzzling him as to where the smoke ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... left at a swoop; "my eyes fairly bleeds for poor Mrs. Maggs" (the housekeeper), "that they do. 'Twas bad enough in the old country, where we knew our places, even though some was ambitioned to get out of them; but here it's like blind man's buff, and enough to turn a body giddy. Mrs. Maggs hasn't a sittin' room of her own where she and the butler and the nurse can have their tea in peace or entertain guests, but she sets two tables in the servants' hall, and a pretty time she ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... advertisements to be informed of the articles he still continues to sell by wholesale and retail; and also respectfully informs them, that he has just come to hand, a fresh assortment of Chintzes and Callicoes, Gentlemen's fancy Waistcoating, silk Romal, buff and other Shawls, printed Jeans, cotton and linen Handkerchiefs, a variety of Ribbons, all of a late importation; Nankeens of a superior quality, and cheaper by nine pence in the single piece than can be purchased in New-York by the quantity. Among his fancy patterns for ladies are, the Covent ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks

... that night two hundred slingers were enrolled, and next day as many as fifty horse and horsemen passed muster as duly qualified; buff jackets and cuirasses were provided for them, and a commandant of cavalry appointed to command—Lycius, the son of Polystratus, by ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon

... door was locked; he must have gone up the chimney, out upon the leads, and so escaped; but Christopher is after him. I protest, Mrs. Montague, you take it too quietly. The wretch!—a new suit of clothes, blue coat and buff waistcoat. I never heard of such a thing! I declare, Mr. Montague, you are vastly good, not to be in a ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... too good, Sah," the Jamaican answered, "your bes' way is to take de train f'm Spanish Town. Dat'll land you right in Buff Bay." ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... boots. When he don't bet he takes no notice, walks past with a vague look on his face, as if he didn't see the people, and he don't care that for the 'orses. Knowing he don't mean no business, I cries to him, 'The best price, Mr. Buff; two to one on the field, ten to one bar two or three.' He just catches his hie-glass tighter in eye and looks at me, smiles, shakes his head, and goes on. He is a warm 'un; he is just about as 'ot as they ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore

... still scouting about on hands and knees in the dampness of the rhododendrons. Suddenly he reached his long arm in among the shrubs and picked up a little reed stick. On the end of it was a small cylinder of buff brown. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... show ye're game," said the convict, "thar won't no hurt come to ye. This here car's way-billed fer Buff'lo, 'n' I'm waitin' ter be took up now. It's a grain car. Yer ain't goin' ter peach wot I tell ye, now? I wuz put wise to it afore I come out by a railroad bloke. I had it straight these here cars would be picked up fer Buff'lo the nex' day after I done my trick. But they ain't took 'em up yet, ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... clerical advice, Fanny retired into the garden to gather her parent some flowers; but immediately returned shrieking. She was followed by a Highwayman with a cocked hat, mustachios, bandit's ringlets, a scarlet hunting-coat, and buff boots. This gentleman had shown his extraordinary politeness—although a perfect stranger—by giving Miss Fanny a kiss in the garden; conduct for which the Curate very properly cursed him, in the strongest language. Apparently a quiet and orderly character, the Highwayman ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... shore. High Down, with its fine chalk-cliffs, rises six hundred feet above the sea, being haunted by numerous sea-gulls, and under it is Scratchell's Cave, a singular recess in the rock accessible only by boat. Sheltered by the bold headland is Alum Bay, with its tinted sands, gray, buff, and red, and from Headon Hill, its eastern boundary, the coast stretches away to Yarmouth, a little town on the Solent, where are the remains of one of the defensive blockhouses built by Henry VIII. The shores of the strait trend to the north-east, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... buff-colored felt hat. Light buff, indeed, seemed to be his chosen color, for he wore a buff coat, buff vest and buff trousers. Moreover, his hair, his bushy eyebrows and his short, thin moustache ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... hat with a feather in it, the skirted coat of buff and blue which flapped around his bow-legs, and the rows of gold buttons across his chest were in slovenly imitation of a naval uniform. But there was nothing like naval discipline on those crowded decks where half the crew appeared to be drunk ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... Father Abraham?" exclaimed a stout man, who was dressed in a buff jerkin, and a pair of boots ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... Juice. Maverack's Sweet. Red Astrachan. Batchelor or King. Gravenstein. Buff. American Summer Pearmain. Shockley. Julian. Ben Davis. Mangum. Hall. Fall Pippin. Mallecarle. Maiden's Blush. Horse. Summer Rose. Bonum. Porter. Large Striped Pearmain. Rambo. Rawle's Janet. Large Early Bough. Disharoon. Fall Queen, or Ladies' ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... On this occasion the blue is capped with many soft white horses chasing south, and the serrated barren hills of Egypt are slipping away north. They are coloured various tints of pale, faded leather, light buff, and light red, and the sun glares brilliantly over all, "drying up the blue Red Sea at the rate of twenty three feet per year," this from the Orient-Pacific Guide; you can yourself almost fancy you hear the sea fizzling ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... fluttering from it. The flag had on it the stars and stripes. This was strange to Rip. But Rip saw something he remembered. The tavern sign. He recognized on it the face of King George. Still the picture was changed. The red coat gone. One of blue and buff in its place. A sword, and not a scepter, in the hand. Wore a cocked hat. Underneath was ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... cantering down the hill-sides, crashing through the beech-woods, echoing through the chalky hollows, ride leisurely the gay Cavaliers. Some in new scarfs and feathers, worthy of the "show-troop,"—others with torn laces, broken helmets, and guilty red smears on their buff doublets;—some eager for their first skirmish,—others weak and silent, still bandaged from the last one;—discharging now a rattle of contemptuous shot at some closed Puritan house, grim and stern as its master,—firing anon as noisy a salute, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... he exclaimed, impatiently, as he drew on his buff gantlets. "The sun is mounting apace, and we should not lose the best portion ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... calling out to him to take heart of grace, while Simon made a feint of trying to beat Mother Dolly, Hal started forward and dealt a blow sufficient to make Simon cry out, 'Ha, well struck, sir, if you had had a better grip of your lance! I even feel it through my buff coat.' ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... reception and drawing rooms full of a gay crowd of young folk. The rooms are beautifully decorated, there is a profusion of flowers and palms in the halls and on the stairs; and a host of footmen in bright-buttoned, buff-coloured livery coats, short trousers, and white stockings, move quietly about, betraying the well-trained instincts of hereditary lackeydom. There are county councillors, judges, officers of army and navy, bankers, ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... conveniently be called 'The Military Soudan,' stretches with apparent indefiniteness over the face of the continent. Level plains of smooth sand—a little rosier than buff, a little paler than salmon—are interrupted only by occasional peaks of rock—black, stark, and shapeless. Rainless storms dance tirelessly over the hot, crisp surface of the ground. The fine sand, driven by the ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... impatience of this large, bland, prosperous personage was growing in him. From the rim the top-hat had left upon his shining forehead to the tightly-screwed eyeglass that assisted his left eye; from the pink Malmaison carnation in the buttonhole of his frock-coat to the buff spats that matched his expansive waistcoat in shade, the large Major was the personification of luxurious, pampered, West End swelldom, the type of a class Saxham abhorred. He had seen the heavy dandy under other conditions, in circumstances strenuous, severe, even tragic. Then he had borne ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... could just be made out through a veil of thin stratus clouds, and then the light was more or less normal again. As soon as we could see what our surroundings were, it was clear enough that we had done right in stopping the game of blind man's buff we had been playing on the previous day. It might otherwise have had an unpleasant ending. Right across our line of route and about 500 yards from our camp the surface was so broken up that it was more like a sieve than anything else. ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... tamer tames him; See you! on the farms hereabout a hundred oxen young and old, and he is the man who has tamed them, They all know him, all are affectionate to him; See you! some are such beautiful animals, so lofty looking; Some are buff-color'd, some mottled, one has a white line running along his back, some are brindled, Some have wide flaring horns (a good sign)—see you! the bright hides, See, the two with stars on their foreheads—see, the round bodies and broad backs, How straight and square they stand on ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... the Army of the Potomac repaid robbing equally well. As a rule those from that Army were not searched so closely as those from the West, and not unfrequently they came in with all their belongings untouched, where Sherman's men, arriving the same day, would be stripped nearly to the buff. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... by. He rode into camp in the morning. The soldiers were drawn up in the road, and men and women and children who had come to look at Washington were crowded all about. They saw a tall, splendid, handsome man in a blue coat with buff facings, and epaulets on his shoulders. As he took off his hat, drew his shining sword, and raised it in sight of all the people, the cannon began to thunder, and all the people hurrahed and tossed their hats ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various

... themselves scarcely less brilliant than the flowers beside the path. At the top of the drive was the big, white colonial mansion, with its high storied porch and great white pillars. On the porch stood the genial host in a buff-colored suit with knee-breeches, his kindly face radiating welcome to each guest. The riders sprang from their saddles and threw the bridles to the waiting servants, the chaises and the chariots emptied their owners and were whisked away. All mounted the wide steps, greeted Mr. Cooper, ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland

... the doorscraper, sir. She laid down on the flags and got the chain through before she started hollerin. Shes lying there now; and she says that youve got the key of the padlock in a letter in a buff envelope, and that you will see her when ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw

... obtained as the hydrate, CaO2.8H2O, by P. Thenard (Ann. Chim. Phys., 1818, 8, p. 213), who precipitated lime-water with hydrogen peroxide. It is permanent when dry; on heating to 130 deg. C. it loses water and gives the anhydrous dioxide as an unstable, pale buff-coloured powder, very sparingly soluble in water. It is used as ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... "incorporated with Boehmen"; said this and that; much disinclined to homage; and would not do it. Stiff, surly fellows, much deficient in discernment of what is above them and what is not: a thick-skinned set; bodies clad in buff leather; minds also cased in ill habits ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... demipique, or war-saddle, with an air that showed it was his familiar seat. He had a bright burnished head-piece, with a plume of feathers, together with a cuirass, thick enough to resist a musket-ball, and a back-piece of lighter materials. These defensive arms he wore over a buff jerkin, along with a pair of gauntlets, or steel gloves, the tops of which reached up to his elbow, and which, like the rest of his armour, were of bright steel. At the front of his military saddle hung a case of pistols, far beyond the ordinary size, nearly two feet in length, ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... tell uv trouble 'tween de whites en de colored peoples, but dere wuzn't none uv dat 'round whey I stay. Dey say some uv de slave run 'way fa bad treatment en stay in de woods. Didn't hab no jails den en when dey'd ketch em, dey'ud buff em en gag em en hoss whip em. Now, I ne'er see none uv dat but ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various

... set deep beneath brows bristling like a wire-haired terrier's—were on the boy in the farther corner, who sat on his backer's knee, shoeless, stripped to the buff, with an angry red mark on the right breast below the collar-bone; a slight boy and a trifle undersized, but lithe, clear-skinned, and in the pink of condition; a handsome boy, too. By his height you might have guessed him under ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... she was generally willing to do anything one wanted, and her biceps were as hard as mine, for I pinched them to see. We got two pairs of gloves, much too big for us, and stuffed cotton wool in to make them like boxing-gloves, as we used to stuff out the buff-coloured waistcoat when we acted old gentlemen in it. But it did not do much good; for I did not like to hurt Henrietta when I got a chance, and I do not think she liked to hurt me. So I took to dumb-belling every morning in my night-shirt; and at last I determined I would have ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... had made sad havoc, though he held it before the light and swore, by not less than three saints, the holes were all made by bullets. If either had doubted this evidence of his valor, he was ready to strip to the buff, and satisfy their eyes with the veritable scars. But they all declared themselves satisfied that he had given sufficient proof of his valor. Indeed, the odor that began to escape as he doffed his coat, in earnest of his sincerity, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... she was small and slightly built, although her figure was hidden in a long "check apron" or calico pinafore with sleeves—a local garment—which was utterly incongruous with her originality. Her skin was olive, inclining to yellow, or rather to that exquisite shade of buff to be seen in the new bark of the madrono. Her face was oval, and her mouth small and childlike, with little to suggest the aboriginal type in ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... wife was a pretty woman in brown with a floriferous straw hat, and the group was altogether very Sundayfied and shiny and spick and span. The shop itself had a large plate-glass window whose contents were now veiled by a buff blind on which was inscribed in scrolly letters: "Rymer, Pork Butcher and Provision Merchant," and then with voluptuous elaboration: "The World-Famed ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... in which to live in the vicinity of Boston. There were straggling troops passing up and down the Plymouth road every day. Sometimes they were redcoats and sometimes buff and blue, but all seemed to be very hungry and extremely thirsty, and the Adams household received a great deal more attention than it courted. The master of the house was away, but all seemed to know who lived there, and the callers were ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... a puzzler," muttered the man. "Blind man's buff's nothing to it, and no pretty gals to catch. Now, whereabouts am I? I should say I'm just close to the corner by the square, and—well, now, look ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... erratic poet and playwright. In one of them he lived and died, just above the rooms tenanted by the learned Blackstone, who, at that time engaged in penning the fourth volume of his "Commentaries," was often grievously annoyed by the dancing- and drinking-parties, the games of blind-man's-buff, and the noisy singing of "poor Noll" and his boon companions. Goldsmith took up residence in the Temple in the spring of the year 1764, in a very shabby set of rooms, which he shared with Jeffs, the butler of the society. Here Dr. Johnson visited him, says Mr. Forster, "and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various

... Santiago and Calatrava. Their bearing would admit them, so unmistakably are they hidalgos. Their long hair, their turned-up moustaches, their pointed beards, their steel gorgets, their corselets or their buff doublets render them in advance ancestral portraits to hang up, with their arms blazoned on the corner of the canvas, in the galleries of old castles. No one has known so well as Velasquez how to paint ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... of petticoat, I've put on buff, To try what may be got by lying rough: How think you, sirs? ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... reverse. To acquire an accurate knowledge of any dubbing, hold it between the sun and your eyes. Mohairs may be had of all colours, black, blue, yellow and tawny, from feuille morte a dead leaf, and Isabella which is a whitish yellow soiled buff. ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland

... To dye a buff color, boil equal parts of arnotto and common potash, in soft clear water. When dissolved, take it from the fire; when cool, put in the goods, which should previously be washed free from spots, and color; ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous

... in curious contrast to the Queen, who sat upon heaped-up cushions, her rich buff and black gown a blaze of jewels, her yellow hair, now streaked with grey, roped with pearls, her hands heavy with rings, her face past its youth, past its hopefulness, however noble and impressive, past its vivid beauty. Her eyes wore ever a determined ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... pumpkin head, was running as fast as his wooden feet and wobbly legs would take him from Dorothy. A game of blind-man's-buff was in full swing, and Scraps and Tik-Tok, the Scarecrow and Nick Chopper, the Glass Cat and the Cowardly Lion, the Wizard of Oz and the wooden Sawhorse, Cap'n Bill and Betsy Bobbin, Billina and the Hungry Tiger were tumbling over each other ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... ladies consented, and "Puss in the corner" proved a peacemaker. Presently, in came the boys; and being exiles from the German, gladly joined in the games, which soon were lively enough to wake the sleepiest. "Blind-man's-buff" was in full swing when Mr. Shaw peeped in, and seeing Polly flying about with band-aged eyes, joined in the fun to puzzle her. He got caught directly; and great merriment was caused by Polly's bewilderment, for she ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott

... from the ground. Cf. stage-direction in Day's Humour out of Breath, iv. 3. "Enter Aspero, like Hortensio, Florimell, and Assistance on the upper stage." Later in the same scene: "They renew Blind mans Buff on the Lower stage." See also Dyce's note on Middleton's Family ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... tempered brightness to the floor. The bones of the structure are everywhere in evidence, and an element of its beauty, by reason of the admirably direct and logical arrangement of posts and trusses. The vertical walls are covered with plaster-board of a light buff color, converted into good sized panels by means of wooden strips finished with a thin grey stain. The structural wood work is stained in similar fashion, the iron rods, straps, and bolts being painted black. This color ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... He wore a buff-coat, under which no doubt there would be a shirt of mail; his gorget and wristlets were of polished steel, and his headgear was a steel cap under a cover of peach-coloured velvet. Thigh-boots encased his legs; sword and dagger hung in the silver carriages ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... was continually sending pleasant little gifts and souvenirs to his Warsaw friends. This tenderness and consideration displayed itself too in his love of children. He would spend whole evenings in playing blind-man's-buff or telling them charming fairy-stories from the folk-lore in ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... clairvoyance, this was not very satisfactory. She read the inscription on a card when her eyes were bandaged, pressing it to her forehead; but then olden experiences in the way of blindman's buff convince me that it is very difficult to say when a person ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... girls have a great many games. The boys play with bows and arrows. They play "blindman's buff," and "hunt the slipper," and handball and football. The girls take part in the football. One of their games is the "stick and ring" game. The ring is made of skin and is sometimes covered with beads. Each boy has a stick, and he throws it at the ring while it is rolling along the ground. ...
— Big People and Little People of Other Lands • Edward R. Shaw

... would undoubtedly have fallen also upon Van Wandenberg, who choking with a tempest of passion that was too great to find utterance in words, had gathered up his rotund figure, and with an agility wonderful in a man of his years and vast obesity, so heavily armed, in a buff coat and jack-boots ribbed with iron, a heavy sword and cloak, clambered on the back of his horse, as a clown would climb up a wall; and with a visage alternating between purple and blue, by the effects of rage and strangulation, he surveyed the prisoner for ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... triglyphs were painted blue and the metopes red, and that all the mouldings were decorated with leaf-ornaments, "eggs-and-darts," and frets, in red, green, blue, and gold. The walls and columns were also colored, probably with pale tints of yellow or buff, to reduce the glare of the fresh marble or the whiteness of the fine stucco with which the surfaces of masonry of coarser stone were primed. In the clear Greek atmosphere and outlined against the brilliant sky, the Greek temple must have presented ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... these fisher-folk are farmers also, tilling and cultivating the heath-lands which lie beyond the village. The fisher cottages are quite pretty, with thatched or red-tiled roofs, white or buff rough-cast walls, green painted doors and windows, with black painted foundations which protect them from the sand. Bright flowering plants in the windows and the neat and clean appearance of the whole betoken the joy and comfort that reigns in the fisherman's home. Many household duties are ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson

... Side, or other Parts, attended with acute inflammatory Symptoms; in others, it put on the Appearance of the common, low, or nervous Fever, for a Day or two. Blood drawn in the Beginning from some Patients did not seem much altered; from others it threw up a strong inflammatory Buff[1]; but where the Fever had continued some time, it was commonly of a loose Texture, and of a livid Colour; unless when the Sick were accidentally seized with pleuritic Stitches, or ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro

... were as tough a crowd As Boston anywhere allowed; It was a club of wicked men— The oldest, twelve, the youngest, ten; They drank their soda colored green, They talked of "Art," and "Philistine," They wore buff "wescoats," and their hair It used to make the waiters stare! They were so shockingly behaved And Boston thought them so depraved, Policemen, stationed at the door, Would raid them every hour or more! They used to smoke (!) and laugh out loud ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... four o'clock the great bell of the northern tower, the one whose swinging stirred the house of the Huberts, began to ring; and it was at that very moment that Hubertine and Angelique reappeared. The former had put on a dress of pale buff linen, trimmed with a simple thread lace, but her figure was so slight and youthful in its delicate roundness that she looked as if she were the sister of her adopted daughter. Angelique wore her dress of white foulard, with its soft ruchings at the neck and wrists, and nothing else; neither earrings ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola

... are! Why, Caudle, I've been reckoning that, with buff slippers and all, we can't well do it under seventy pounds. No; I won't take away the slippers and say fifty. It's seventy pounds and no less. Of course, what's over will be so much saved. Caudle, what a man ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold

... surface is hacked and supplied with rottenstone and water. 2. What is the best method of polishing steel? A. The usual method is to grind first on a coarse wet stone, then on a fine wet stone, then on a lead lap supplied with fine emery and oil, and finally polish on a buff wheel supplied with dry crocus and revolving ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various

... grindstone I have ground, Toiling to meet the toll of profiteers, And now comes AUSTEN, budgeting around, "Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears" (MILTON), and leaves me naked as a poodle, Shorn—to the buff—of my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various

... them tea and cake and let them have their way. Into the midst of this Henry Galleon came—a little, round, fat man with a face like a map, the body of Napoleon and a trot round the room like a very amiable pony, eyes that saw everything, understood everything, and forgave everything, a brown buff waistcoat with gilt buttons, white spats and a voice that rolled and roared ... he was the tenderest, most alarming person in any kind of a world. He was so gentle that any sparrow would trust him implicitly and so terrific that an army would most certainly fly from before ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... figure. If a sharp wind blew suddenly, I saw it tremble and flutter; it was thin, flat, impalpable. I removed my glasses, and looked with my eyes at the wife. I could have smiled to see the humid tenderness with which she regarded her strange vis-a-vis. Is life only a game of blindman's-buff? of droll cross-purposes? ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... on; and the Marquis de Precy remained at Paris, detained by a low fever. Six weeks after, in broad day, he heard some one undraw his bed-curtains, and turning to see who it was, he perceived the Marquis de Rambouillet, in buff-leather jacket and boots. He sprang from his bed to embrace his friend; but Rambouillet, stepping back a few paces, told him that he was come to keep his word as he had promised—that all that was said of the next life was very certain—that he must change his conduct, and in the first action ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... houses are of stone, handsome and well-built. On the bleaching grounds you see long miles of linen—Irish miles, of course—and all the surroundings are pleasant. After this, no need to say the place is one of the blackest, most Unionist, Protestant, and loyal in the whole country. A number of buff placards issued by Nationalists attract respectful attention. The same bill is stuck all over Belfast—in the High Street, on the hoardings facing the heretic meeting houses, everywhere. It purports to present the sentiments ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... after breakfast the two horsemen jogged into view, ambling over the sand-hills whose red-hot edge met a shimmering sky some little distance beyond the station pines. Both wore pith helmets and fluttering buff dust-coats, but both had hot black legs, the pair in gaiters being remarkable for their length. The homestead trio, their red necks chafed by the unaccustomed collar, gathered grimly at the open end of the veranda, where they exchanged impressions while the religious raiders ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... kind iv a blind man's buff," said Mr. Dooley. "It's a thrile iv cunnin' an' darin' between th' army an' th' navy. Be manes iv it we tarn whether th' inimy cud sneak into Boston afther dark without annywan seein' thim an' anchor in Boston common. Ye an' I know diff'rent, Hinnissy. We know how manny people are in ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne

... however, was in advance, a tall person, wrapped to the eyes in fur, wearing a silver bugle in front of his cap, and covered with buff breeches. ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... to see in a gentleman's library—an article that sprang out of his own personal wants. This was an elegant pier-glass, into whose depths he was accustomed to gaze in self-admiration. He was flashily dressed in a heavy coat, buff waistcoat, and drab trousers. A gold chain of fabulous weight hung around his neck and ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... in their game of blind-man's buff, when the necessity of trusting to the touch came abruptly to an end—as if the handkerchief had been suddenly jerked from their eyes. The change was caused by a light streaming in through a side gallery into which they had strayed. It was at first dim and distant, but soon shone upon them with ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... by his curiosity got the better of him, and he flitted to the top of a brush heap and peeped out at me surreptitiously. My glass was upon him in a moment, revealing his whitish throat and mottled chest washed with buff, the latter being his characteristic marking. A few days later he was singing in a small apple tree by my neighbor's fence. I stole as close to him as I could and peered at him through my binocular, while he returned the compliment by peering at me, and then warily ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... attract more attention than the white nutmeg or Torres Straits pigeons (MYRISTICIVORA SPILORRHOA), which resort to the islands during the incubating season. White with part of each flight feather black, and with down of pale buff, it is a handsome bird, strong and firm of flesh, and possesses remarkable powers on the wing. Half of the year is spent with us. They come from the north in their thousands during the first week of September, and depart during March. While in this quarter they ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield



Words linked to "Buff" :   brownness, skin, snuff-color, groupie, shine, aerophile, smooth, caramel brown, followers, aficionado, bacchant, in the buff, follower, buff-coloured, caramel, blindman's buff, buffer, chromatic, tegument, bacchanal, amorist, following, polish, cutis, fan, smoothen, yellowish brown, implement, burnish, buffet, furbish, raw sienna, buff-brown



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