CHAFF • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Chaff

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noun

Chaff n.

The glumes or husks of grains and grasses separated from the seed by threshing and winnowing, etc. "So take the corn and leave the chaff behind." "Old birds are not caught with caff."

Anything of a comparatively light and worthless character; the refuse part of anything. "The chaff and ruin of the times."

Straw or hay cut up fine for the food of cattle. "By adding chaff to his corn, the horse must take more time to eat it. In this way chaff is very useful."

Light jesting talk; banter; raillery.

(Bot.) The scales or bracts on the receptacle, which subtend each flower in the heads of many Compositae, as the sunflower.

Chaff cutter, a machine for cutting, up straw, etc., into "chaff" for the use of cattle.

verb

Chaff v. t. To make fun of; to turn into ridicule by addressing in ironical or bantering language; to quiz. "Morgan saw that his master was chaffing him." "A dozen honest fellows... chaffed each other about their sweethearts."

Chaff v. i. (past & past part. chaffed; pres. part. chaffing) To use light, idle language by way of fun or ridicule; to banter.

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Etymology of 'Chaff'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Chaff" Quotes from Famous Books

... good a fellow not to put up with a little mild chaff of that sort. He looked at the horizon, where the faint streaks of another dawn were beginning ...

— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... down with all his eager blood hot within him, by men as hot-blooded as himself. But once when the old doctor's eye caught the up-turned, straining gaze of the father Darley, seeking with all his soul to find a grain of holy comfort in the chaff of words, his conscience smote him. Had he nothing to say that should calm anger and revenge with spiritual power? no breath of the comforter to soothe repining into resignation? But again the discord between the laws of man and the laws of Christ ...

— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... trilobites are here—and with about as much chance of reappearing as mastodons as humanity has of reproducing those antique horrors. The fragments of witch-madness and star-faith may be still raked in tolerably perfect lumps out of the mire or chaff of mankind; but I do not think, young lady, that you will ever be accused of riding on a broom, though you unquestionably had an ancestress, somewhere before or after Hengist, who enjoyed the reputation of understanding ...

— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: he shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire: 17 whose fan is in his hand, thoroughly to cleanse his threshing-floor, and to gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn up with ...

— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman

... shall lie like sheaves upon our fields; the ruins of your castles fly like chaff beneath the ...

— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

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