raff

See also: Raff

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɹæf/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Etymology 1

From Middle English raf, from Old French raffer, of Germanic origin; compare German raffen, akin to rap (“to snatch”). Compare riffraff, rip (“to tear”).

Noun

raff (countable and uncountable, plural raffs)

1. (dated) A disorderly heap; a jumble; a large quantity
   • 1680, Isaac Barrow, A Discourse Concerning The Unity Of The Church:

     A raff of errors.

   • 1825 September 2, Charles Francis Barnard, diary entry‎^[1]:

     Bowditch and I (with a raff of books) left town about five in the morning.

2. (dated) lumber or refuse.

   Synonym: flotsam

   • 1923, Joel Townsley Rogers, Weird Tales, Hark! The Rattle!:

     [a hut] was fashioned of the raff of the slough—dead fronds, rotting branches, withered marsh grasses. Its sad gray-green were in the living wilderness like a monument to death.

3. (uncountable or plural) The common rabble or mob; riffraff.
   • 1839, Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist‎^[2]:

     Jostling with unemployed labourers of the lowest class, ballast-heavers, coal-whippers, brazen women, ragged children, and the raff and refuse of the river, he makes his way with difficulty along […]

4. (dated) A common, crass or low-standing person. Alternatively, a snob.

   Synonym: churl

   • 1860 June 30, Charles Dickens, All the Year Round:

     English raffs of every description

   • 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 64, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:

     There is no town of any mark in Europe but it has its little colony of English raffs—men whose names Mr. Hemp the officer reads out periodically at the Sheriffs' Court—young gentlemen of very good family often, only that the latter disowns them; frequenters of billiard-rooms and estaminets, patrons of foreign races and gaming-tables.

Derived terms

• raffish

Verb

raff (third-person singular simple present raffs, present participle raffing, simple past and past participle raffed)

1. (dated) To sweep, blow, snatch, draw, or huddle together; to sweep up.
   • 1609, Richard Carew, The Survey of Cornwall, London: […] S[imon] S[tafford] for Iohn Iaggard, […], →OCLC:

     Causes and effects which I thus raffe up together.

   • 1861, Robert Orme, A History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan/Volume 1/Book 1:

     they felt no effect of the storm which was raffing at Madrass

   • 1898 June 2, The Independent (New York City), We Will Make Holiday:

     the summer wind flows aloft through the tree-tops, or raffs the last year's leaves in the pits between the gnarled roots

Etymology 2

Alternative forms

• raffe
• raffie

Noun

raff (plural raffs)

1. (nautical) A three-cornered sail set on a schooner when before the wind.

References

• “raff”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC. (Etymology 1)

Anagrams

• ARFF, FFAR

German

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ʁaf/

• Audio (Germany (Berlin)):

  (file)

• Homophone: RAF

Verb

raff

1. singular imperative of raffen
2. (colloquial) first-person singular present of raffen

Welsh

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /raːf/

Noun

raff

1. soft mutation of rhaff

Mutation

Mutated forms of rhaff

radical	soft	nasal	aspirate
rhaff	raff	unchanged	unchanged

Note: Certain mutated forms of some words can never occur in standard Welsh.
All possible mutated forms are displayed for convenience.

Further reading

• R. J. Thomas, G. A. Bevan, P. J. Donovan, A. Hawke, et al., editors (1950–present), “raff”, in Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru Online (in Welsh), University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies