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Buff

adjective
1.
Of the yellowish-beige color of buff leather.



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"Buff" Quotes from Famous Books



... housekeepers,—under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are: and of course so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... were as tough a crowd As Boston anywhere allowed; It was a club of wicked men— The oldest, twelve, the youngest, ten; They drank their soda colored green, They talked of "Art," and "Philistine," They wore buff "wescoats," and their hair It used to make the waiters stare! They were so shockingly behaved And Boston thought them so depraved, Policemen, stationed at the door, Would raid them every hour or more! They used to smoke (!) and laugh out loud (!) They were a very devilish crowd! They formed ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... most of the floor space. The wainscoting, of clean white pine, ascended four feet and ended in a narrow ledge or shelf, devised, as they afterwards discovered, to hold photographs or small pictures which the rules prohibited them from placing on the walls. The walls were painted a light buff. The furniture consisted of two single-width beds, two chiffoniers, a study table and two straight-backed chairs. The beds were against the opposite walls, the table in the geometrical centre of the rug, the chiffoniers ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour

... the man. "Blind man's buff's nothing to it, and no pretty gals to catch. Now, whereabouts am I? I should say I'm just close to the corner by the square, ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... Exchange" occupies the main hall, which is on the floor above the Long Room. This hall is one of the most beautiful apartments in the city. It is seventy-four feet long, fifty-four feet wide, and fifty-two feet four inches high. Its lofty ceiling is arched and decorated with bright red and buff penciling upon a sky blue ground, while the walls are relieved by broad square pilasters, painted in brilliant bronze, with tall windows and arched tops rising between, and other spaces between the columns covered with drapery in more subdued colors. Up to a few feet from the floor the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... cessation and truce with thirst. Ha, thou false fever, wilt thou not be gone? By my figgins, godmother, I cannot as yet enter in the humour of being merry, nor drink so currently as I would. You have catched a cold, gammer? Yea, forsooth, sir. By the belly of Sanct Buff, let us talk of our drink: I never drink but at my hours, like the Pope's mule. And I never drink but in my breviary, like a fair father guardian. Which was first, thirst or drinking? Thirst, for who in the time of innocence would have drunk without being athirst? Nay, sir, it was drinking; for ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... prince, "I propose that we play the most innocent and rollicking of games—blindman's buff." [Footnote: ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... forward and two aft, for mounting 7 in. Armstrong guns. These weapons, in the case of the Empress of India, are already awaiting the vessel at Vancouver. The Empress of India is painted white all over, has three pole masts to carry fore and aft sails. She has two buff-colored funnels and a clipper stern, and in external build much resembles the City of Rome. Her length over all is 485 feet; beam, 51 feet; depth, 36 feet; and gross tonnage, 5,920 tons. The hull, of steel, is divided into fifteen compartments ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various

... those days, they had left off wigs—except bishops, judges, and lawyers, in their robes. Men had their hair short and curly, and wore coats shaped like evening ones—generally blue, with brass buttons—buff waistcoats, and tight trousers tucked into their boots, tight stocks round their necks, and monstrous shirt- frills. Ladies had their gowns and pelisses made very short-waisted, and as tight and narrow as they could be, though with enormous sleeves ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge

... colour, arising from a mixture of dusky and white hairs, with rufous-yellow tinge; the head and shoulders partaking most of this last colour: round the eyes blackish: above the nostrils ten or twelve black whiskers, four inches or more in length: all the under parts of the body are of a tawny buff-colour, deepest on the throat, where the bottom of the hairs are rust-colour: the tail is of the colour of the back for about one quarter of its length, from thence to the end, black: the toes on the fore feet are five in number, the inner one placed high up: on the hind feet four toes only: with ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip

... single rim sherd (139614a) which comes from a shallow bowl with a direct flat-topped rim. Color of both the interior and exterior surfaces is buff. The paste is fairly coarse, with a granitic sand temper which has also some pumice inclusions. There is also evidence of vegetable-fiber inclusions. There is no mica in the paste. The fragment is ...
— A Burial Cave in Baja California - The Palmer Collection, 1887 • William C. Massey

... vassal, why so sour? I might well look sour, since you and your little daughter lately chose to play blind-man's-buff with your lawful Prince, making a mock of him. But I pardon you, and hope you have come to your senses since. Come, sit down; drink my health in the wine cup. I trow this ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... little thing, but you would not have guessed it to see him; for he always wore a loose fluffy coat, which made him look bigger and plumper than he really was. It was a gray and brown and creamy buff-and-white sort of coat, quite mottled, with a rather plain, nearly black, back. It was trimmed with white, there being a white stripe near the end of the coat-tail, a big, fine, V-shaped white place under his chin that had something ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch

... and, lining the distant wall, what vast cupboards, suggestive of inexhaustible apricot jam and promiscuous butler's perquisites! A stray picture or two had found their way down there, and made agreeable patches of dark brown on the buff-coloured walls. High over the loud-resounding double door hung one which, from some indications of a face looming out of blackness, might, by a great synthetic effort, be pronounced a Magdalen. Considerably lower down hung the similitude ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... kape on!" shouted the enraptured Pat; "don't be throublin yesilf with questions; dear knows it's mesilf that's in it;" and his smiling face was mirrored in numerous brass buttons, which were hanging around his buff vest. ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale

... pray God, they be honest, for there may be much knavery in the dark: faith, if I were there, I would have some knavery with them. [Aside] Good master, will ye carry the torch yourself, and give me leave to play at blind-man-buff with my mistress. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... sending pleasant little gifts and souvenirs to his Warsaw friends. This tenderness and consideration displayed itself too in his love of children. He would spend whole evenings in playing blind-man's-buff or telling them charming fairy-stories from the folk-lore in ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... engaged in a game exactly similar to our blind man's buff. Another set were walking on stilts, which raised the children three feet from the ground. They were very expert at this amusement, and seldom tumbled. In another place I observed a group of girls standing together, and apparently enjoying themselves very much; ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne

... these fisher-folk are farmers also, tilling and cultivating the heath-lands which lie beyond the village. The fisher cottages are quite pretty, with thatched or red-tiled roofs, white or buff rough-cast walls, green painted doors and windows, with black painted foundations which protect them from the sand. Bright flowering plants in the windows and the neat and clean appearance of the whole betoken the joy and comfort that reigns in the fisherman's home. Many household duties ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson

... brilliant than the flowers beside the path. At the top of the drive was the big, white colonial mansion, with its high storied porch and great white pillars. On the porch stood the genial host in a buff-colored suit with knee-breeches, his kindly face radiating welcome to each guest. The riders sprang from their saddles and threw the bridles to the waiting servants, the chaises and the chariots emptied their owners and were whisked away. All mounted the wide steps, greeted Mr. Cooper, and passed ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland

... loved him, I knew not why, and thought him so angelic and remarkable." That "blue nankeen" sounds strangely, it may be, to the readers of this later generation, but in the first quarter of the century blue and yellow or buff-colored cotton from China were a common summer clothing of children. The places where the factories and streets of the cities of Lowell and Lawrence were to rise were then open fields and farms. My recollection is that we did not think very ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... With flannelled oarsmen oft delight To drift upon thy streams, and float In Salter's most luxurious boat; In buff and boots the cheery knight Returns (quite safe) from Naseby fight; Thy humblest folk are clean and bright, Thou still must win the public vote, Philistia! Observe the High Church curate's coat, The realistic hansom note! Ah, happy land untouched of blight, Smirks, ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang

... into Cluhir on a misty Saturday morning, with a basket of fowl under her brown and buff shawl, was not sorry when, from a side road on the line of march, a donkey-cart, driven by an acquaintance, drew forth at the ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... without the customary O.C. (Captain Hutchinson, one of the most popular officers among the men) of Company-Sergeant-Major "Tug" Wilson (another splendid fellow) were temporarily under the command of a Buff officer (Chapman). A., C. and D. commands were unchanged. 13 Platoon, so fictitiously unlucky(?), was probably the most "pally" combination in the Battalion; both N.C.O.'s and men were on excellent terms—especially with Sergt. T. Allez, one of the finest and most courageous ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq

... musketeers in their ranks with musket, musket-staff, bandelier, sword, powder, ball, and match. Ilk company, both horse and foot, had their captains, lieutenants, ensigns, sergeants, and other officers and commanders, all for the most part in buff coats and goodly order. They had five colours or ensigns, whereof the Earl of Montrose had one having his motto drawn in letters, 'For Religion, the Covenant, and the Countrie.' The Earl Marechal had one, the Earl of Kinghorn ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... unconsciously active when between two figures observed too far away for sight of their faces we quickly make our conclusions concerning their social station, if one be arrayed in a hat trimmed with purple and green, a garnet waist and a buff skirt, while the other, though dressed in strong colors expresses the principles of coloration herewith defined. The purple and green hat may belong to her suit if their colors be repeated by modification, in it; or the garnet and buff become ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... rams with perfect horns. Their hair was thick and soft, pale olive-buff tipped with brownish, and the legs on the "cannon bones" were buff-yellow like the margins of the throat patches. Their color made them practically invisible against the rocks and when I killed the second goral ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews

... He threw a long buff-coloured overcoat across his arm, and went slowly downstairs. A cab was at the door, and he entered it and told the man to drive to Belgrave Square. As they turned the corner of Half Moon Street into Piccadilly, he leant forward over the wooden apron and lazily surveyed the crowd. Every second cab ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens

... ain' none too good, Sah," the Jamaican answered, "your bes' way is to take de train f'm Spanish Town. Dat'll land you right in Buff Bay." ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... built a snow fort; and behind that was the woodshed where we'd been locked in by our new man teacher and which you know about if you've read One Stormy Day at Sugar Creek, and behind the woodshed was the great big schoolyard where we played baseball and blindman's buff and other games in the fall and spring, and where we play fox-and-goose in the winter. For a few minutes I forgot I was supposed to be gathering eggs, and was doing what Pop is always accusing me of doing, which is "dreaming." I was thinking about what had ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens

... that there was horrible truth in this. Stripped to the buff, he would have escaped without a doubt, for he could go through the water like a fish. But he was now fully clothed, and the water-sodden garments clung round him like a coating of lead, impeding his strokes, and cutting down ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... "Waverley" or "Rob Roy" or "The Legend of Montrose," but it is still there to me, investing the figures of Fergus MacIvor and the MacGregor and the Children of the Mist as it did in childhood, when I was so fascinated that I prized my Campbell plaided paper soldiers next to my Continentals in blue and buff. In going through an old trunkful of school-books only the other day, I came upon one of these bonneted fellows, still wonderfully preserved, in an old atlas of the heavens, and then I knew all of a flash why it was that the poor boy soldiers that ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... the bed or sitting in the chair by the bureau, repeating a single line over and over again for two or three hours. Yet he knew perfectly well that he had not been really asleep; a little effort recalled a constant impression of the wall-paper, with its pink flowers on a buff ground, and of the muslin-curtained window, letting in the grey winter light. He had been some seven months in London when this odd experience first occurred to him. The day opened dreary and cold and clear, with a gusty and restless wind whirling round the corner ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... around on their blooming girls and manly sons, and felt that they were well repaid for all the anxiety and toil which their children had occasioned. And when in the evenings the room was cleared, and the merry games of blind-man's-buff and forfeits were engaged in, it may be questioned if any British household had lighter hearts and greater freedom from care than that of the ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... strip to the gymnasium clothes which he wore beneath his ordinary apparel as under garments. His sleeveless shirt he took off as well, thus matching the Wonder who was also stripping to the buff. ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish

... continued Hermiston. "And I would send no man to be a servant to the King, God bless him! that has proved such a shauchling son to his own faither. You can splairge here on Edinburgh street, and where's the hairm? It doesna play buff on me! And if there were twenty thousand eediots like yourself, sorrow a Duncan Jopp would hang the fewer. But there's no splairging possible in a camp; and if ye were to go to it, you would find out for yourself whether Lord Well'n'ton ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... out to my garden," she said, smiling, and stripping off her little buff gauntlets. "There we will have tea a l'Anglaise, and sunshine, and a long, long, satisfying talk; at least I will," she added, laughing and coloring up; "for truly, Monsieur Scarlett, I do not believe I have given you one ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... SYRACUSE. No, he's in Tartar limbo, worse than hell. A devil in an everlasting garment hath him; One whose hard heart is button'd up with steel; A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough; A wolf—nay worse, a fellow all in buff; A back-friend, a shoulder-clapper, one that countermands The passages of alleys, creeks, and narrow lands; A hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry foot well; One that, before the judgment, carries ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... house, since they show without, should be uniform in color, and no attempt be made to suit the individual decoration of a room to them. The material should be plain Holland, white or buff when there are outside blinds, otherwise green or blue. In recent years shutters, or outside blinds, have come somewhat into disuse. This is, on the whole, perhaps an improvement, for they are rarely manipulated with judgment, being either left open or kept shut for continuous ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... game which had been very popular with them a year before. They had invented it themselves, and chosen for it this queer name out of an old fairy story. It was a sort of mixture of Blindman's Buff and Tag—only instead of any one's eyes being bandaged, they all played in the dark. One of the children would stay out in the hall, which was dimly lighted from the stairs, while the others hid themselves in the nursery. When they ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge

... not confined to the Mediterranean, but one which frequents also our own shores, and was once turned to some account in Ireland.[812] The varieties of the P. lapillus differ considerably. Some are nearly white, some greyish, others buff striped with brown. Some, again, are smooth, others nearly as rough as the Murex trunculus. The Helix ianthina, which is included by certain writers among the molluscs employed for dyeing purposes by the Phoenicians,[813] ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... for him during the first two days he had been there, were carefully arranged in the chest of drawers. He had lately purchased a pair of boots. Those he had arrived in were peculiar-looking footgear, buff leather shoes with rubber soles, and he had told his landlady on that very first day that he never wished them to go down ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... and Jessie, and Aikenside, and wondering he had never before observed how very becoming a white wrapper was to sick girls like Maddy Clyde. Had he been asked the question, he could not have told whether his other patients were habited in buff, or brown, or tan color; but he knew all about Maddy's garb, and thought the dainty frill around her slender throat the prettiest "puckered piece" that he had ever seen. How, then, was Dr. Holbrook losing his heart to that little girl of fourteen ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes

... struck with the marked fugitive character of nearly all the natural dyes. The exceptions are: the madder colors, especially when fixed on oil-prepared cotton, as in Turkey red; the black produced by logwood, tannin, and iron; and a few mineral colors, e.g., iron buff, manganese brown, chromate of lead orange, etc., and Prussian blue. Cochineal and its allies, which are such excellent dyes for wool and silk, give only ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various

... of his life, his thoughts, his time, to be associated or shackled in any way by the pursuits of others, he preferred the society of ladies, as less apt to force him into subsequent relations. He willingly spent whole evenings in playing blind man's buff with the young people, telling them little stories to make them break into the silvery laughs of youth, sweeter than the song of the nightingale. He was fond of a life in the country, or the life of the chateau. He was ingenious in varying its amusements, in multiplying its enjoyments. ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... heroine and the hero were both drowned together in the water barrel that I saw in the inn-yard under my window. I took a turn or two up and down my room, and sighed, looking at myself in the glass, adjusted my great white "choker," folded and tied after Brummel, the immortal "Beau," put on a buff waist-coat and my blue swallow-tailed coat with gilt buttons; I deluged my pocket-handkerchief with Eau-de-Cologne (we had not then the variety of bouquets with which the genius of perfumery has since blessed us) ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... mind upon, so as not to be so constantly thinking of this one subject. But children led so easy a life, before any Troubles came into the world, that they had really a great deal too much leisure. They could not be forever playing at hide-and-seek among the flower-shrubs, or at blind-man's-buff with garlands over their eyes, or at whatever other games had been found out while Mother Earth was in her babyhood. When life is all sport, toil is the real play. There was absolutely nothing to do. A little sweeping and dusting about the cottage, I suppose, and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... doubt it was presumed here at home that these frolicsome veterans laughed and sang and romped all day, and day after day, and kept up a noisy excitement from one end of the ship to the other; and that they played blind-man's buff or danced quadrilles and waltzes on moonlight evenings on the quarter-deck; and that at odd moments of unoccupied time they jotted a laconic item or two in the journals they opened on such an elaborate plan when they left home, and then skurried off to their whist ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... junior member of the same, now goes forth from it in the way we see. "Why should a young fellow that has capabilities," thought Conrad, "stay at home in hungry idleness, with no estate but his javelin and buff jerkin, and no employment but his hawks, when there is a wide opulent world waiting only to be conquered?" This was Conrad's thought; and it proved to be a ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle

... with Sir Capel Bedells, and many other persons of quality, one in the company was called Captain Taller. My husband, who had a very quick and piercing eye, marked him much, as knowing his face, and found, through his peruke wig, and scarlet cloak and buff suit, that his name was neither Captain nor Taller, but the honest Jesuit called Friar Sherwood, that had cheated him of the greatest part of his money, and after had lent him the five pieces; so your father went to him, and gave him his five pieces, ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe

... walking down Holborn Hill towards Smithfield. He had on a scarlet coat worked in gold at the button-holes, ruffles, and frill of fine lace, a small white stock, no collar (they were not then invented), a looped hat with a broad black band, buff knee-breeches, and long silk strings, striped white silk stockings, pumps, and paste buckles; his waistcoat was pale blue satin, sprigged with white. It was impossible to look on his fine ample chest, his noble shoulders, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... history. So various, so conflicting, and at times so tenuous, are the theories, that a flippant person might be forgiven did he turn from the whole discussion saying impatiently it was blind man's buff. But on one thing, at least, we must all agree. Once there was a king over this country, and now there is no king. Once the British Crown was the sovereign, and now the Crown has receded into the distance beyond the deep blue sea. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... kept a bold front, accepted every challenge, and even went out of his way to pick a quarrel; yet he quaked at heart continually. He feared and hated the noises of the yard, particularly the crowing of our big buff cochin rooster and the screaming of the guineas. This was one of the swamp-fears that he had brought with him and could not outlive. It haunted him. If he had a conscience, its only warnings were of coming noises great ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp

... remained to give an impression of ample outdoor space. Against the blue of the October morning sky the house, with its dignified Georgian lines, was not without a certain stateliness—rectangular, three-storied, mellow, with buff walls, buff chimneys, white doorways, white casements, white verandas, a white balustrade around the top, and a white urn at each of the four corners. Where, as over the verandas, there was a bit of inclined roof, russet-red tiles gave a warmer touch of color. ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... top of the tree and calling.] Mr. Woodpecker! [To CHANTECLER.] We will ask the learned gentleman in the green coat. [To the WOODPECKER the upper half of whose figure appears at a round hole high up in the tree trunk; his coat is green, his waistcoat buff, and he wears a red skull-cap.] Do you say cockaduddling ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand

... he exclaimed with enthusiasm. "Why can't ye take the trouble to shift seats, and come front here long o' me? We could put one buff'lo top o' the other,—they're both wearin' thin,—and set close, and I do' know but we sh'd be more protected ag'inst ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... in cemetery lots. In that delightfully enthusiastic little book, "The Garden's Story," Mr. Ellwanger says of the Ghent azalea "In it I find a charm presented by no other flower. Its soft tints of buff, sulphur, and primrose; its dazzling shades of apricot, salmon, orange, and vermilion are always a fresh revelation of color. They have no parallel among flowers, and exist only in opals, sunset skies, and the flush of autumn woods." Certainly American ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... of mealies and the water-cask slung beneath the wain, both nearly full, the cask to give forth a sound when it was shaken, and the sacks ready to be emptied out upon a wagon sheet and shed their deep buff-coloured grains, hard, clean, and sweet, in a great heap, which was spread out more and more till they were about two deep, but showed not a ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn

... beneath brows bristling like a wire-haired terrier's—were on the boy in the farther corner, who sat on his backer's knee, shoeless, stripped to the buff, with an angry red mark on the right breast below the collar-bone; a slight boy and a trifle undersized, but lithe, clear-skinned, and in the pink of condition; a handsome boy, too. By his height you might have guessed him under sixteen, but his face set ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Tooth ranch Tom Lorrigan sat and sharpened an indelible pencil with the razor-edged small blade of his jackknife. On the open space which Tom had cleared with the sweep of his arm, a large-sized tablet of glazed and ruled paper, with George Washington pictured in red and blue and buff on the cover, received the wood parings from the pencil. It may have been significant that Tom was careful in his work and made the pencil ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... minutes the three searchers stared at the structure before them. "I believe," said Willie, in the language of blind man's buff, "that ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss

... Van Brunt, as he pinioned her hands, "I should like to see you play blind-man's-buff for once, if I waren't ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... while Simon made a feint of trying to beat Mother Dolly, Hal started forward and dealt a blow sufficient to make Simon cry out, 'Ha, well struck, sir, if you had had a better grip of your lance! I even feel it through my buff coat.' ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and the Woolworth Tower stands majestically in defiance of the elements as a symbol of man's growing independence of nature. This building with its cream terra-cotta surface and intricate architectural details touched here and there with buff, blue, green, red, and gold, rises 792 feet or sixty stories above the street and typifies the American spirit of conceiving and of executing great undertakings. In it are blended art, utility, and majesty. Viewed by multitudes during the day, it is a valuable advertisement ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... somehow he didn't want to be seen, and, instead of staying to be praised, he soon slipped away, making Lita his excuse to vanish behind the curtain while the rest went into the house to have a finishing-off game of blindman's-buff ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott

... narrow deciduous scales, some of which are one inch long. The cones come in clusters of one to seven, from six to eight or rarely ten inches long, very slender when closed and usually curved towards the tip, black-purple or green when young, buff-brown when ripe. It is best recognized by its light-gray smooth bark, broken into squarish plates, its pale-blue-green foliage composed of short needles, and its pendulous cones so slender as to give rise ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... blind man's buff," said Mr. Dooley. "It's a thrile iv cunnin' an' darin' between th' army an' th' navy. Be manes iv it we tarn whether th' inimy cud sneak into Boston afther dark without annywan seein' thim an' anchor in Boston common. Ye an' I know diff'rent, Hinnissy. We know ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne

... in different climates, and come home to relax from cares in a temperate one, and are sober—are the likeliest to live long of any men in the world. Don't you see that his very skin is a fortification of buff? ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... grey eyes, completed the inauspicious outline of the horseman's physiognomy. He had pistols in his holsters, and another pair peeped from his belt, though he had taken some pains to conceal them by buttoning his doublet. He wore a rusted steel head piece; a buff jacket of rather an antique cast; gloves, of which that for the right hand was covered with small scales of iron, like an ancient gauntlet; and a long ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... between these two towns that they passed another troop of horse drawn up in good order, which immediately closed up in the rear and went on with them. The King was particularly struck with the appearance of the commander of this troop, a man gallantly mounted, with a velvet montero on his head, a new buff- coat, and a crimson silk scarf round his waist, who, as the King passed at an easy pace, saluted him splendidly "alia soldado" and received a gracious bow in return. Inquiring of Mr. Herbert who he was, the King was greatly surprised to learn he was the dreadful Major Harrison. He looked ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... bespattered with such cabalistic signs as "R.2.E.," "R.C.," "L.C.," "L.U.E.," and so forth, one sees at a glance that the writer has neither studied dramatic literature nor thought out for himself the conditions of the modern theatre, but has found his dramatic education between the buff covers of French's Acting Edition. Some beginners imagine that a plentiful use of such abbreviations will be taken as a proof of their familiarity with the stage; whereas, in fact, it only shows their unfamiliarity with ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... if the direct rays of the sun would burn their delicate wings; they hunt chiefly in the shade. The linnets will suddenly sweep up into the boughs and converse sweetly over your head. The sunshine lingers and grows sweeter as the autumn gives tokens of its coming in the buff bryony leaf, and the acorn filling its cup. They are so happy, the birds, yet there are few to listen to them. I have often looked round and wondered that no one else was about hearkening to them. Altogether, perhaps, they ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... to expanded, smooth, firm, quite hard when young and becoming soft in age. The color varies greatly, from buff to dull reddish, to reddish-brown, tawny-brown, often yellowish over a portion of the cap, usually paler on the margin. The flesh is white or tinged with yellow, sometimes reddish under the cuticle. The tubes are white when young ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... with your own clothes?" Mr. Meadowlark inquired—meaning that in his opinion Mr. Red-winged Blackbird's black suit, with the shoulders scarlet and buff, was about as ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey

... (Oreocincla nilgirensis) resembles the European thrush in appearance. Its upper plumage is pale brown, spotted with black and buff; its throat and abdomen are white with black drops. This bird has a fine powerful song, but he who wishes to hear it has usually to resort to one of the forests on the plateau of ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar

... Seward. The South might have seen and known that the one hope of the institution of slavery lay in the Union. However it ended, disunion led to abolition. The world—the whole trend of modern thought—was set against slavery. But politics, based on party feeling, is a game of blindman's buff. And then—here I show myself a son of Scotland—there is a destiny. "What is to be," says the predestinarian Mother Goose, "will be, though it never come ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... the hill-sides, crashing through the beech-woods, echoing through the chalky hollows, ride leisurely the gay Cavaliers. Some in new scarfs and feathers, worthy of the "show-troop,"—others with torn laces, broken helmets, and guilty red smears on their buff doublets;—some eager for their first skirmish,—others weak and silent, still bandaged from the last one;—discharging now a rattle of contemptuous shot at some closed Puritan house, grim and stern as its master,—firing anon as noisy a salute, as they pass some mansion where a high-born ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... and other preparations for a ball here also. A carpenter nodded to her, one who had formerly been a fellow-workman of Jude's. A corridor was in course of erection from the entrance to the hall staircase, of gay red and buff bunting. Waggon-loads of boxes containing bright plants in full bloom were being placed about, and the great staircase was covered with red cloth. She nodded to one workman and another, and ascended to the hall on the strength of their acquaintance, where they were putting down a new floor ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... Bantu tribe of British East Africa; but in their version the lizard has disappeared from the legend and has been replaced by the itoroko, a small bird of the thrush tribe, with a black head, a bluish-black back, and a buff-coloured breast. The tale runs thus:—Once upon a time God sent out the chameleon, the frog, and the thrush to find people who died one day and came to life again the next. So off they set, the chameleon leading the way, for in those days he was a ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... bare windows through which the afternoon sunshine streamed on the carpet. The carpet had a pattern of pink peonies on a delicate buff ground, and was shamefully dirty. And the vast apartment, with its white paint and gilding and Italian sketches in water-colour and statuettes under glass, might have been a lady's drawing-room. But ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... mother's heart would break. I have heard all my life that justice is blind; I have learned to believe it, for it stumbles, and gropes, and lays iron claws on the wrong person. As for the lawyers? They are fit pilots: and the courts are little better than blind man's buff. Don't stand chewing your mustache, Ned. Tell me what you want me to do, while baby is asleep. She has a vexatious ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... Barn Swallow, a bit larger, with a tail like an open pair of glistening scissors and his face and throat a beautiful ruddy buff. There were so many glints of color on his steel-blue back and wings, as he spread them in the sun, that it seemed as if in some of his nights he must have collided with a great soap-bubble, which left its shifting hues upon ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... can with difficulty be distinguished from the grey and green lichens that cover them. The lappet moth (Gastropacha querci) closely resembles both in shape and colour a brown dry leaf; and the well-known buff-tip moth, when at rest is like the broken end of a lichen-covered branch. There are some of the small moths which exactly resemble the dung of birds dropped on leaves, and on this point Mr. A. Sidgwick, in a paper read before the Rugby School Natural History Society, ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... petticoats, buff and blue, Sashes and streamers and holiday tire, Columbine trips her a measure for you, Gayest heart of the waltzing choir. Under the pines I saw her dance, Lilting a ...
— In the Great Steep's Garden • Elizabeth Madox Roberts

... church was the forest; the first dome, the welkin; the first altar, the sun. But that was, when man went forth in native buff, brother to the lion, not the ox, without ruffles and without faith. His spirit, in the course of time, was born; it grew and developed zenithward and nadirward, as the cycles rolled on. And in ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... into Darby's hand the shallow basket of round brown eggs, with two tiny white ones on the top for themselves that had been laid by Specky, the lovely black-and-buff bantam. Then, with many kisses and warnings to be careful, she set the happy pair upon ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... they used to play macao and hazard in Mr. Fox's time. Yes, my dear father often told me that they sate up always until nine o'clock the next morning with Mr. Fox at Brooks's, whom I remember at Drummington, when I was a little girl, in a buff waistcoat and black satin small clothes. My brother Erith never played as a young man, nor sate up late—he had no health for it; but my boy must do as every body does, you know. Yes, and then he often goes to a place called the Back ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... girl he knew; summer, crowned and trimmed with green, brooded on the long rock rampart across the stream. Turquoise patches of sky and big clouds, leafy parapets, ships passing to the sea; and in mid-stream an anchored island of steel painted white and buff, bristling with long thin guns, the flower-like flag rippling astern; another battle-ship farther north; another, another; and farther still the white tomb—unlovely mansion of the dead—on outpost duty above the river, guarding with the warning of its dead glories the ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... to "a Thames wherry in a world full of tempest and commotion," and congratulated himself on "the creek I have put into and the snugness it affords me." His very clothes suggested that he was the inhabitant of a plaything world. "Green and buff," he declared, "are colours in which I am oftener seen than in any others, and are become almost as natural to me as a parrot." "My thoughts," he informed the Rev. John Newton, "are clad in a sober livery, for the most part as grave as that of a bishop's servants"; but his body was dressed ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... company was conveyed in two trips to the Guardian-Mother. When some of the guests asked how the passengers contrived to amuse themselves on the long voyage, Mrs. Belgrave organized a section of them, and played Blindman's Buff, Turning the Cover, Copenhagen, and other games, to the intense delight ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... his frail form clad in a buff-colored smock, turned and surveyed the laboratory. In the center of the square room five improvised operating tables were drawn up, each one flooded individually with, light from focused flood-tubes above ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore

... games. Boston, Puss in the Corner, Stir you must, Hunt the Squirrel round the Woods, Blind Man's Buff, and Jerusalem. Mr. Atkins, who built the hall, and was a strict Orthodox man a Know-nothing, got them to play "Break the Pope's neck," which made a deal of fun. The oldest people sung some of the old New England tunes, in the old New England way. How well they ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker

... a pale, oblong little face, that looked younger under its softening "bang" of fair curls across the forehead. She was a buff-and-gray-colored creature, with a narrow square chin and narrow square shoulders, and a flatness and straightness about her everywhere that gave her rather the effect of a wedge, to which the big black straw hat she wore tilted a little on one side somehow conduced. ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... show ye're game," said the convict, "thar won't no hurt come to ye. This here car's way-billed fer Buff'lo, 'n' I'm waitin' ter be took up now. It's a grain car. Yer ain't goin' ter peach wot I tell ye, now? I wuz put wise to it afore I come out by a railroad bloke. I had it straight these here cars would be picked up fer Buff'lo the nex' day after I done my trick. But ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... must certainly know, For he was the Edinburgh Prophet. They all of them knew Mr. Jeffrey's Review, Which with Holy Writ ought to be reckon'd: It was, through thick and thin, to its party true, Its back was buff, and its sides were blue, Morbleu! Parbleu! It served them for law ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... lost. Portions also of Samian ware have been found, one stamped with a leopard and stag, another bearing part of the potter's name, ILIANI; with fragments of hand-mills, fibulae, &c. {7b} The present writer has two jars, or bottles, of buff coloured ware, of which about a dozen were dug up when the foundations of the workhouse were being laid in 1838, they are probably Samian, a friend having exactly similar vessels which she brought from Cyprus. The writer has in his possession the head of a porphyritic mallet which ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... "Ephraham" was present at the country dance in all his glory. He was attired in his master's old claw-hammer coat, a very buff vest, a high standing collar the corners of which stood out six inches from his face, striped pantaloons that fitted as tightly as a kid glove, and he wore number fourteen shoes. He looked as though he were born to call the figures of the dance. The fiddler was a young ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... ALEXIEVITCH,—Today Thedora came to me with fifteen roubles in silver. How glad was the poor woman when I gave her three of them! I am writing to you in great haste, for I am busy cutting out a waistcoat to send to you—buff, with a pattern of flowers. Also I am sending you a book of stories; some of which I have read myself, particularly one called "The Cloak." . . . You invite me to go to the theatre with you. But will it not cost too much? Of course we might sit in the ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... was standing on the steps of the inn. He had altered the fashion of his hair, had fastened on large bushy eyebrows which he had obtained from a skilful perruquier in Cadiz, and a moustache of imposing size turned up at the tips; he wore high buff leather boots, and there was an air of military swagger about him, and he was altogether so changed that at the first glance the muleteer failed to recognize him. As soon as the mules were unburdened, Gerald found an opportunity of speaking ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... Buff" is one of the best, oldest, and simplest of games. One player is blindfolded, is turned round two or three times to confuse his ideas as to his position in the room, and is then told to catch whom he can. If he catches some one, yet cannot tell who it is, he must go ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... look at that and enjoy it," and she pointed to the child standing knee-deep in graceful ferns, looking as if she grew there, a living buttercup, with her buff frock off at one plump shoulder and her bright hair ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... as they left their rock and hastened toward the valley of Wyoming, felt that now they were coming into contact with the great war itself. They had looked upon a uniformed enemy for the first time, and they might soon see the colonial buff and blue of the eastern army. Their hearts thrilled high at new ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... seen, but not overheard, so that our going away to more distant places should create no suspicion. Mr. M. then informed us that we could come to his cottage the next afternoon, instead of the rocks; we should be able to undress ourselves in the buff, and have a perfect orgie of salacious delights. We heartily approved of this plan, and after an amusing conversation, we parted to meet the next day on the sands, but in the contrary directions to the rocks, for the purpose of afterwards ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... oftener it was a rose-embowered cottage, of easy access to the city, where he could have Ethie all to himself when his day's labor was over, and where the skies would not be brighter than Ethie's eyes as she welcomed him home at night, leaning over the gate in the pale buff muslin he liked so much, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... of the action of the arteries, there appears to be less of the coagulable lymph or mucus secreted on their internal surfaces; whence there is not only a defect of that buff or size upon the blood, which is seen on the surface of that, which is drawn in the sensitive irritated fever; but the blood, as it cools, when it has been drawn into a bason, scarcely coagulates; and is said to be dissolved, and is by some supposed to be in a state of actual putrefaction. See ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... loose my buff-coat, each holster let fall, Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all, Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear, Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer; Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good, Till at length ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... That famished slave, Beggared by wealth, who starves that he may save, Brings hither but his sheet. Nay, the ostrich-man, That feeds on steel and bullet, he that can Outswear his lordship, and reply as tough To a kind word, as if his tongue were buff, Is chapfallen here: worms, without wit or fear, Defy him now; death has disarmed the bear. Thus could I run o'er all the piteous score Of erring men, and having done, meet more. Their shuffled wills, abortive, vain intents, Fantastic humours, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... the head bottle-washer was beating his breast and imploring me in broken accents to explain away my guilt. I threw five hundred francs on his desk and covered my eyes. With tears rolling down his cheeks, he pushed the notes under a blotting-pad and wrote laboriously upon a buff sheet. Then a woman was produced. Between explosions of distress she made us some tea. In common decency we couldn't push off for a while. Besides, I wasn't quite sure that it was all over. However, everybody seemed too overcome to say anything, so, after ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... serious secrets that Mr Brand had told. And then, suddenly, it was forced on her conviction that Mr Brand—the mild Mr Brand that she had seen a month or two before their departure to Nauheim, playing "Blind Man's Buff" with his children and kissing his wife when he caught her—Mr Brand and Mrs Brand had been on the worst possible ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... two ladies went back across the old bridge. Miss Kilner, wrapt in a soft buff shawl, paused a second to look down into the dark moat. Only a few moonbeams touched the still water; the rushes stood up like tall black spears; one could fancy armed men crouched in ambush there in the shadow ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney

... He was charmed with the cows, admired their breed, almost raved over Jack, the bulldog, whose pedigree was nearly as long as that of Lady Mary, who was the daughter of a hundred earls. He gave me many hints about my fine poultry, and wrote that first night for a pair of his very finest buff cochins to be sent over from his place in England, which he had just inherited from his uncle. He showed us where the apple-trees needed pruning, and was so interested in my attempts at an old-fashioned garden, which Bee had hidden ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell

... the Oxford movement was in its essence an attempt to reconstruct the English Church in harmony with this romantic ideal. . . . As Scott's imagination was fascinated with the picturesque paraphernalia of feudalism—with its jousts, and courts of love, and its coats of mail and buff-jerkins—so Newman's imagination was captivated by the gorgeous ritual and ceremonial, the art and architecture of mediaeval Christianity. . . . Newman sought to revive in the Church a mediaeval faith in its own divine mission and ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... others at pince merille, others at cards or other games of pleasure with their neighbours; others, who had supped together, were singing songs and telling fables and stories and wagers; others were in the street with their neighbours, playing at blind man's buff or at bric and at several other games of the kind.'[5] In those days, before the invention of printing had made books plentiful, medieval ladies were largely dependent for amusement upon telling and listening ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... said the Doctor. "I can't play Blind-Man's Buff and stitch up wounds without a lamp. I ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... but that he for one preserved his go-ashore traps for the Spanish main, where the tie of a sailor's neckerchief might make some difference; but as for a parcel of unbreeched heathen, he wouldn't go to the bottom of his chest for any of them, and was half disposed to appear among them in buff himself. The men laughed at what they thought was one of his strange conceits, and so we ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... game, and a very exciting one, and, as often was the case, it soon merged into Blindman's Buff. This was even more romping and noisy, and soon the picnic sounded like ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells

... Nonsense, [have] been capable of forgetting that neither Prince Voltager, nor his Grandfather, could strip a Naked Man of his Doublet; but a Fool of a colder Constitution, would have staid to have Flea'd the Pict, and made Buff of his Skin, for the Wearing of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... o'clock when the "Comet," polished and oiled and looking as neat in his dark blue and buff uniform as a soldier on parade, stood ready for departure. The hamper of luncheon was strapped on behind, and underneath the middle seats in a pan of ice were bottles of root beer and ginger ale. Presently he ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes



Words linked to "Buff" :   buff-brown, brown, bacchant, followers, cutis, tegument, lover, chromatic, snuff-colour, aerophile, shine, amorist, skin, smoothen, hit, metalhead, leather, aficionado, follower, smooth, brownness, polish, bacchanal, implement, following, snuff-color, groupie, raw sienna, burnish



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