puff

«puff» in Mova's school dictionary: A short burst of air, smoke, wind or steam — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a puff, puffs); verb (puff, puffs, puffed, puffing)

meaning for a pupil

1) A short burst of air, smoke, wind or steam. tree →

2) (verb) To breathe quickly and hard, for example after running. tree →

3) (verb) To blow out air or smoke in small bursts. tree →

4) (verb) To swell up or make bigger: «puff out your cheeks». tree →

5) A light pastry or food filled with air: «cream puff». tree →

sense in the lessons

In stories: «I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down» (The Three Little Pigs); steam trains puff. In PE, children are puffed (out of breath) after running. In health, an inhaler puff for asthma. Phrases: «out of puff», «puff out», «puff up», «a puff of smoke».

examples

• A puff of smoke came from the chimney. tree →
• I was puffing after running up the hill. tree →
• The wolf huffed and puffed. tree →
• Puff out your cheeks like a fish. tree →
• The bird puffed up its feathers to keep warm. tree →
• She took a puff of her asthma inhaler. tree →
• The magician vanished in a puff of smoke. tree →
• The Frog puffed up still more. tree →

note

Past: puffed. «Puffed» or «out of puff» (UK, Australia) = out of breath. «Puffy» eyes are swollen.

In the corpora

• Male frigatebirds puff up a big red throat pouch to attract females, and frigatebirds can stay in the air for weeks without landing.
• Swell sharks gulp water to puff themselves up and wedge into rock cracks so a predator cannot pull them out.
• Toad puffs up: «I'm not really clever, according to my friends.
• At lunch Toad is so puffed up that the others suspect something.
• Mum leaves a bowl of bread dough by the radiator, and an hour later it has puffed up to twice its size.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «puff» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.