tufty

tuft +‎ -y

tufty (comparative tuftier, superlative tuftiest)

1. Resembling or having the form of a tuft; growing in tufts.
   • 1727, James Thomson, Summer,

     Witness, thou best Anana, thou the pride

     Of vegetable life, beyond whate’er

     The poets imaged in the golden age:

     Quick let me strip thee of thy tufty coat,

     Spread thy ambrosial stores, and feast with Jove!

   • 1920, Katherine Mansfield, “Promises” in Bliss and Other Stories,

     There was a bed of nothing but mignonette and another of nothing but pansies—borders of double and single daisies and all kinds of little tufty plants she had never seen before.

   • 1933, Emma Orczy, The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel, Chapter 34,

     Here he stood for a moment looking up and down the narrow road and the heavy snowflakes covered his shoulders and his tufty, ill-kempt hair.

   • 1990, John Updike, Rabbit at Rest, Random House, 2010, I, p. 14,

     In recent years Nelson has grown a mustache, a tufty brown smudge not much wider than his nose.

2. (obsolete) Of a cow: seeking a bull to mate with.

tufty (plural tufties)

1. (Britain, informal) The tufted duck.
   • 2005, Simon Barnes, A Bad Birdwatcher's Companion

     Buoyant. That's a tufty. Well, tufted duck, to be formal, but the name always sounds more like tufty duck, and there is something inspiringly matey about a tufty: we are on nickname terms with the bird at first glance.