different between tuft vs tufa

English

Etymology

From Middle English tuft, toft, tofte, an alteration of earlier *tuffe (> Modern English tuff), from Old French touffe, tuffe, toffe, tofe (“tuft”) (modern French touffe), from Late Latin tufa (“helmet crest”) (near Vegezio), from Germanic (compare Old English þ?f (“tuft”), Old Norse þúfa (“mound”), Swedish tuva (“tussock; grassy hillock”)), from Proto-Germanic *þ?b? (“tube”), *þ?baz; akin to Latin t?ber (“hump, swelling”), Ancient Greek ????? (t??ph?, “cattail (used to stuff beds)”). Equivalent to tuff.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /t?ft/
• Rhymes: -?ft

Noun

tuft (plural tufts)

1. A bunch of feathers, grass or hair, etc., held together at the base.
2. A cluster of threads drawn tightly through upholstery, a mattress or a quilt, etc., to secure and strengthen the padding.
3. A small clump of trees or bushes.
4. (historical) A gold tassel on the cap worn by titled undergraduates at English universities.
5. (historical) A person entitled to wear such a tassel.

Derived terms

• tufthunting
• tufthunter

Translations

Verb

tuft (third-person singular simple present tufts, present participle tufting, simple past and past participle tufted)

1. (transitive) To provide or decorate with a tuft or tufts.
2. (transitive) To form into tufts.
3. (transitive) To secure and strengthen (a mattress, quilt, etc.) with tufts.
4. (intransitive) To be formed into tufts.

Translations

English

Etymology

From Italian tufo, from Latin t?fus or t?phus. Doublet of tuff.

Noun

tufa (countable and uncountable, plural tufas)

1. Calcareous lime deposited by precipitation from a body of water, such as a hot spring.
   • 1993, George V. Benson, Meeting Highlights, George V. Benson (editor), Proceedings of the Workshop "Ongoing Paleoclimatic Studies in the Northern Great Basin", Geological Survey Circular, US Geological Survey, page 1

     B.J. Szabo presented the results of a survey of the tufa mounds that border Pyramid Lake indicating that uranium-series methods can be used to approximate the ages of such tufa deposits. In the Pyramid Lake Basin, tufas less than 50,000 years old contain large quantities of excess thorium, and the error in age estimates made using uranium-series methods is not small enough to confirm results from ¹⁴C determinations.

   • 2003, Martyn Pedley, Ian Hill, The recognition of barrage and paludal tufa systems by GPR: case studies of the geometry and correlation of Quaternary freshwater carbonates, C. S. Bristow, Harry M. Jol (editors), Ground Penetrating Radar in Sediments, page 208,

     Resedimented tufas also contribute where erosion has washed detritus from other hillside tufa deposits.

   • 2011, Chuxing Huang, 9: Characteristics and Formation Mechanism of the Tufa Landscape in Tianshengqiao in Zhongdian County, Tadej Slabe (editor), South China Karst II, page 95,

     The tufas at Tianshengqiao have different shapes in different development stages and in different structural sections.

2. (petrology) A variety of volcanic rock, tuff.

   Synonym: tuff

   • 1825, "Oliver Oldschool" (Joseph Dennie), John Elihu Hall (editors), The Port Folio, page 426,

     This again is followed by a bed of stony tufa of a reddish colour, containing fragments of a spongy lava, amphigone, pyroxene, mica, and common lava; and, like the former, traversed by argillaceous veins.

Hypernyms

• (calcareous deposit): calcite, limestone

Translations

See also

• travertine

Further reading

• tufa on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• FUTA, UFTA, futa

Latin

Etymology

Related to Medieval Greek ????? (to?fa), but the ultimate source is unclear.

Noun

t?fa f (genitive t?fae); first declension

1. a kind of helmet crest or plume
2. a kind of military standard

Declension

First-declension noun.

Descendants

• Albanian: tufë
• Aromanian: tufã
• Romanian: tuf?

References

• tufa in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• tufa in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)
• tufa in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré Latin-Français, Hachette