Puff

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• IPA^(key): [pʰʊf]

Onomatopoeic, analogous to English buff.

• Buf, Buff

Puff m (strong, genitive Puffs or Puffes, plural Puffe or Püffe)

1. (colloquial, now regional) thud, wham; light, harmless blow

Onomatopoeic from the sound of the dice shaker hitting the ground.

Puff n (strong, genitive Puffs or Puffes, no plural)

1. (obsolete because hardly played) a kind of dice game, anterior to backgammon

From the dice game, from disguising idioms like „zum Puff gehen“ actually meaning going to a brothel.

• P*ff (censored)

Puff m or n (strong, genitive Puffs or Puffes, plural Puffs)

1. (colloquial) brothel, whorehouse, bordello

   Synonyms: Bordell, Freudenhaus, Hurenhaus

• → French: pouf (“brothel”) (semantic loan)

From the sense “thud, wham” understood as a whoosh forming a bulge, and in the sense “cushion seat” semantic loan from French pouf, the “laundry basket” apparently not present in French but extended in German from the broad sense in French of any textile heap.

• (bulge in drapery): Puffe

Puff m (strong, genitive Puffs or Puffes, plural Puffe)

1. (archaic) puff, a bulge in drapery

   Synonym: Bausch

   • 1930–1943, Robert Musil, chapter 45, in Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften [The Man Without Qualities], book 1, Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, published 1957:

     Aus der senkrechten Bügelfalte empor, schien Arnheims Leib in der Gotteseinsamkeit der Bergriesen dazustehn; durch die Welle des Tals mit ihm vereint, stand auf der anderen Seite einsamkeitsüberglänzt Diotima, in ihrem Kleid der damaligen Mode, das an den Oberarmen kleine Puffen bildete, über dem Magen den Busen in eine kunstvoll gefaltete Weite auflöste und unter der Kniekehle sich wieder an die Wade legte.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

2. a kind of beanbag chair, a large cushion ball used as a seat, Sitzpuff

   Hypernym: Sitzsack

   • 2016, Sarah Waters, translated by Ute Leibmann, Fremde Gäste: Roman, Köln: Bastei Lübbe, →ISBN, page 96:

     Du kannst dich auch aufn Puff setzen, so schmal wie du bist.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

3. laundry basket, Wäschepuff

Borrowed from English puff, hence often italicized and written with minuscule in early occurrences, and probably also sharing the English pronunciation.

Puff m (strong, genitive Puffs or Puffes, plural Puffs)

1. (genetics) a chromosome puff

• “Puff” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache
• “Puff” in Uni Leipzig: Wortschatz-Lexikon
• “Puff” in Duden online