TUFT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does tuft mean? 

• TUFT (noun)
  The noun TUFT has 2 senses:

1. a bunch of hair or feathers or growing grass

2. a bunch of feathers or hair

  Familiarity information: TUFT used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TUFT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A bunch of hair or feathers or growing grass

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Synonyms:

tuft; tussock

Hypernyms ("tuft" is a kind of...):

bunch; clump; cluster; clustering (a grouping of a number of similar things)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "tuft"):

wisp (a small tuft or lock)

hexenbesen; staghead; witch broom; witches' broom (an abnormal tufted growth of small branches on a tree or shrub caused by fungi or insects or other physiological disturbance)

coma ((botany) a usually terminal tuft of bracts (as in the pineapple) or tuft of hairs (especially on certain seeds))

Sense 2

Meaning:

A bunch of feathers or hair

Classified under:

Nouns denoting animals

Hypernyms ("tuft" is a kind of...):

crest (a showy growth of e.g. feathers or skin on the head of a bird or other animal)

 Context examples 

He had already withdrawn his eye from the Peri, and was looking at a humble tuft of daisies which grew by the wicket.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

A cell characterized by the presence of a tuft of blunt, squat microvilli (120-140/cell) on the cell surface.

(Brush Cell, NCI Thesaurus)

This species is motile by polar or bi-polar tufts of flagella, does not hydrolyze esculin, indole negative and oxidase and catalase positive.

(Delftia acidovorans, NCI Thesaurus)

“These are the sacrifices one makes for one’s country, Watson,” said Holmes, pulling at his little tuft.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

While I was copying the plain inscription for him at his request, I saw him stoop, and gather a tuft of grass from the grave and a little earth.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

More than once, as tufts of grass came out in my hand or my foot slipped in the wet notches of the rock, I thought that I was gone.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

His hair was standing out all over him in tufts where her teeth had mauled.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

The eyes were blue-gray under great black tufts, very clear, very critical, and very masterful.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Beyond stretched the rugged rock, wet and shining, with a green tuft here and there thrusting out from it, but little sign of ridge or foothold.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Evidently, the red tufts of hair must have had symbolic value for these social groups.

(Hair was dyed for first time as part of funeral rituals, University of Granada)