ruff

Multiple Entries:
  ruff    ruffe  

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
ruff1

▶noun

• 1 a projecting starched frill worn round the neck, characteristic of Elizabethan and Jacobean costume.

• 2 a projecting or conspicuously coloured ring of feathers or hair round the neck of a bird or mammal.

• 3 a pigeon of a domestic breed with a ruff of feathers.

• 4 (pl. same or ruffs) a North Eurasian wading bird, the male of which has a large ruff and ear tufts in the breeding season. [Philomachus pugnax; the female is called a reeve.]

– derivatives
ruffed adjective.

– origin C16: prob. from a var. of rough.

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
ruff2

▶noun

• 1 (also tommy ruff) an edible marine fish of Australian inshore waters. [Arripis georgianus.]

• 2 variant spelling of ruffe.

– origin C19: from ruffe.

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
ruff3

▶verb (in bridge and whist) play a trump in a trick which was led in a different suit.

■ play a trump on (a card).

▶noun an act of ruffing or opportunity to ruff.

– origin C16 (orig. the name of a card game): from OFr. rouffle (perh. an alt. of Ital. trionfo ‘a trump’).

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
ruff4

▶noun Music one of the basic patterns (rudiments) of drumming, consisting of a single note preceded by either two grace notes played with the other stick or three grace notes played with alternating sticks.

– origin C17: prob. imitative.

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
ruffe /rʌf/ (also ruff)

▶noun a European freshwater fish, with a greenish-brown back and yellow sides and underparts. [Gymnocephalus cernua.]

– origin ME: prob. from a var. of rough.