Tough or tuff?
tough is an adjective meaning “Of a material, strong and resilient; sturdy”; tuff is a noun meaning “A light porous rock, now especially a rock composed of compacted volcanic ash…”. Use tough as an adjective and tuff as a noun (tuff is also an adjective: “Impressive, amazing, awesome, cool”). They sound the same (/tʌf/). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) tough is about 60 times as common as tuff.
What is the difference between tough and tuff?
| tough | tuff | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | adjective, interjection, noun, verb | noun, adjective |
| Meaning | Of a material, strong and resilient; sturdy Of food, difficult to cut or chew A person who obtains things by force; a thug or bully | A light porous rock, now especially a rock composed of compacted volcanic ash varying in size from fine sand to coarse gravel Impressive, amazing, awesome, cool |
| Example | The tent, made of tough canvas, held up to many abuses | bro thinks he's tuff |
| Forms | tougher, toughest | tuffs |
| Pronunciation | /tʌf/ /tɐf/ /tʊf/ | /tʌf/ /tɐf/ /tʊf/ |
| In writing | 59 times per million words | about once in every 1 million words |
Sources: tough and tuff in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of tough and tuff
tough
- 1
Of a material, strong and resilient; sturdy
The tent, made of tough canvas, held up to many abuses
- 2
slangUsed to indicate lack of sympathy
If you don't like it, tough!
- 3
A person who obtains things by force; a thug or bully
They were doing fine until they encountered a bunch of toughs from the opposition
- 4
To endure
- 5
Of food, difficult to cut or chew
To soften a tough cut of meat, the recipe suggested simmering it for hours
- 6
To toughen
- 7
Of a person or animal, rugged or physically hardy
Only a tough species will survive in the desert
- 8
Of a person, stubborn or persistent; capable of stubbornness or persistence
He had a reputation as a tough negotiator
tuff
- 1
A light porous rock, now especially a rock composed of compacted volcanic ash varying in size from fine sand to coarse gravel
- 2
Eye dialect spelling of tough
- 3
Impressive, amazing, awesome, cool
bro thinks he's tuff
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, tough or tuff?
tough appears 59 times per million words; tuff about once in every 1 million words.
tough 59 times per million wordstuff about once in every 1 million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search tough vs tuff?
“tough vs tuff” is searched about 1,600 times a month on Google and 20 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“tuff vs tough”, “tough or tuff”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.