▪ I. tuff, n. Geol.
(tʌf)
Forms: 6 tuph, 7–8 (9 dial.) tuft, (8 tufft), 7– tuff, (9 tuf).
[ad. 16th c. F. tufe, tuffe, (R. Estienne) tuf, Cotgr. tuf, tuffe, ad. It. tufo ‘a kind of soft, crumbling, or mouldring stone to build withall’ (Florio):—L. tōfus, tophus, q.v. The change of gender in obs. F. tuffe (= tufa) has not been explained. Tuft follows the better known tuft n. (where also the t is an addition).]
1. Any light porous cellular rock; = tufa. (But there is a recent tendency to differentiate tuff from tufa, and restrict it to ‘volcanic tuff’.) a. calcareous (or calc) tuff: see tufa 1 a and quot. 1816.
| 1569 T. Stocker tr. Diod. Sic. ii. xliv. 99/2 With their axes and hatchets they cut thereof as a man shoulde do on a Tuph or softe Stone. 1603 [see tuff stone in 2]. 1744 Platt in Phil. Trans. XLIII. 266 A rocky petrified Substance,..by the Miners called Tuft. 1785 Barker ibid. LXXV. 353 note, Tuft is a stone formed by the deposit left by water passing through beds of sticks, roots, vegetables &c. of which there is a large stratum at Matlock Bath. 1816 Accum Chem. Tests (1818) 166 When these waters suddenly lose the excess of carbonic acid..essential to the solution of the lime, there is an irregular precipitation; hence those tender calcareous cellular stones, and calcareous spongy tuffs. 1839 Ure Dict. Arts 771 Calcareous tuf consists of similar incrustations made by petrifying rivulets running over mud, sand, vegetable remains, etc. 1843 Portlock Geol. 213 As calc tuff, it [carbonate of lime] is of very frequent occurrence throughout the primary and secondary district. 1881 Raymond Mining Gloss., Tuff or Tufa, a soft sandstone or calcareous deposit. |
| (b) 1893–4 Heslop Northumbld. Gloss., Tuft, a bed of fine-grained, siliceous stone, like ganister, which occurs in the carboniferous series below the Great Limestone. It is also known as water sill. |
b. volcanic tuff, a tuff produced by the consolidation of volcanic ashes and other erupted material.
| 1815 W. Phillips Outlines Mineralogy & Geol. (1818) 187 Pumice, obsidian or volcanic glass, slime called volcanic tuff,..are also the products of volcanic eruptions. 1839 Darwin Voy. Nat. xvii. (1852) 373 Craters, composed of the soft and yielding tuff. 1841 J. Trimmer Pract. Geol. 173 Aqueous lavas, which, as they consolidate, form rocks of an earthy appearance, known by the name of volcanic tuff or tufa. 1850 Ansted Elem. Geol., Min. etc. Gloss., Tufa, Tuff, an Italian name for a variety of volcanic rock of earthy texture,..made up..of fragments of volcanic ashes. 1881 Judd Volcanoes v. 117 The tuffs covering the city of Pompeii consist of numerous thin layers of lapilli and volcanic dust. 1914 Brit. Mus. Return 229 Volcanic lapilli and palagonite-tuff from Monte Brazil, Terceira, Azores. |
c. trap-tuff: see
quot.| 1833–4 J. Phillips Geol. in Encycl. Metrop. (1845) VI. 768/1 Aggregations of the disintegrated..materials of trap rocks are generally known under the vague name of trap tuff and compared with volcanic tuff. |
2. attrib. and
Comb., as
tuff bed,
tuff block,
tuff cone,
tuff crater,
tuff mountain,
tuff stone [F.
pierre de tuffe (
Cotgr.)],
tuff-wacke;
tuff-like adj.| 1854 Hooker Himal. Jrnls. I. ii. 44 Enormous *tuff beds are deposited on the sandstone. |
| 1864 J. Hunt tr. Vogt's Lect. Man x. 262 In these *tuff blocks, in the vicinity of the town of Puy, are found the mammoth and the rhinoceros with a bony nasal septum. |
| 1881 Judd Volcanoes 118 Finely-stratified *tuff-cones. |
| 1839 Darwin Voy. Nat. xvii. (1845) 376 To the south of the broken *tuff-crater. |
| 1880 Academy 20 Nov. 370 They [certain Chinese rocks] exhibit *tuff-like characters. |
| 1861 E. T. Holland in Peaks, Passes & Gl. Ser. ii. I. 9 A high range of *tuff mountains. |
| 1603 Owen Pembrokeshire (1892) 80 There is *Tuff Stone found in the Mountaine over Newport. c 1640 J. Smyth Lives Berkeleys (1883) I. 309 Fetching..the Tuft stone from Dursley by land. 1802 Brookes' Gazetteer (ed. 12) s.v. Lugano, Most of the houses are built of tufstone. 1822–7 Good Study Med. (1829) I. 61 Tufa or *tuffwacke, as Schmeisser calls it, and tarras, which are compounds of iron, alumine, silex, and carbonate of lime. 1847 J. Leitch tr. C. O. Müller's Anc. Art §271. (1850) 303 Pozzolana (an earthy tuff-wack). |
▪ II. † tuff, v. Obs. rare.
[Echoic: cf. puff.] intr. To make a short explosive sound with the breath. So
tuff int., an imitation of such a sound.
| 1553 Respublica i. iii. 247 Avarice. What saie ye? Inso. Hake. Adul. Tuff. Op. Hem. Ibid. iii. iv. 774 Adul. But looke, who cometh yonder, puffing and tuffing?.. Avar...Where have ye lost your breath? 1598 Florio, Sbuffante.. panting, breathing, tuffing as a cat, chafing. a 1821 Keats in Critic 9 Feb. (1895) 104/1, I for a moment whiles was prisoner ta'en And rifled, tuff! |
▪ III. tuff obs. form of
tough,
tuft.