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PlainSpell

huff

/hʌf/noun, verb

huff is a noun meaning “A heavy breath; a grunt or sigh” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled H-U-F-F and has one syllable, and it appears 1.3 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of huff is huffs.

What does huff mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A heavy breath; a grunt or sigh.

    With a huff, he lifted the box onto the back of the truck.

  2. 2

    A condition of anger, annoyance, disgust, etc.

    in a huff

  3. 3

    obsoleteOne swelled with a false sense of importance or value; a boaster.

  4. 4

    The act of removing an opponent's piece as a forfeit for deliberately not taking a piece (often signalled by blowing on it).

verb

  1. 1

    To breathe heavily.

    The run left him huffing and puffing.

  2. 2

    To say in a huffy manner.

  3. 3

    To enlarge; to swell up.

    Bread huffs.

  4. 4

    To bluster or swell with anger, arrogance, or pride; to storm; to take offense.

  5. 5

    To treat with arrogance and insolence; to chide or rebuke rudely; to bully, to hector.

  6. 6

    archaicTo vex; to offend.

  7. 7

    To inhale psychoactive inhalants.

  8. 8

    To remove an opponent's piece as a forfeit for deliberately not taking a piece (often signalled by blowing on it).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce huff?

  • US /hʌf/
  • Australia /hɐf/
  • /hʊf/

Huff has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-huff.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of huff

  • huffs plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • huffing participle, present
  • huffed participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is huff?

Huff appears 1.3 times per million words in written English, the 24,745th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Huff in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
GermanVerärgerung (condition of anger, annoyance, disgust etc), schnauben, heftig schnaufen (to breathe heavily), aufquellen, aufgehen (to enlarge; to swell up), aufblasen (to bluster or swell with anger, arrogance, or…)
Frenchsouffler, souffler comme un bœuf (to breathe heavily), sniffer (to inhale psychoactive inhalants)
Spanishresoplar, resollar (to breathe heavily)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does huff come from?

Probably an altered spelling of earlier *hough, represented by Scots hech (“to breathe hard, pant”). Compare also German hauchen (“to breathe”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).