tuff
part of speech
noun (tuff — uncountable); adjective (slang, tuff — spelling of «tough»)
meaning for a pupil
1) Tuff is a light, rough rock made from volcanic ash that has been pressed and stuck together over time. tree →
2) (slang) «Tuff» is a playful spelling of «tough», used online and by young people to mean cool, impressive or hard: «that's tuff». tree →
sense in the lessons
In science and geography lessons on rocks and volcanoes, tuff is a kind of igneous rock made from ash; it tells the reader that a volcano once erupted nearby. Ancient Romans and the people of Easter Island carved and built with tuff because it is soft enough to cut. In slang, «tuff» appears in chats and on social media.
examples
- Tuff forms when volcanic ash settles and hardens into rock. tree →
- The famous Easter Island statues are carved from tuff. tree →
- Our rock kit has a piece of pale, crumbly tuff. tree →
- Some old houses in Italy are built of tuff blocks. tree →
- The guide said the cliff was made of tuff from an eruption long ago. tree →
- (slang) «Your new trainers are tuff!» tree →
- (slang) «That level was tuff, I nearly gave up.» tree →
note
Rock sense: uncountable, «some tuff», «a block of tuff». Sounds exactly like «tough» (homophones) — in a science text, «tuff» is rock; in an ordinary text, the hard-or-strong word is spelt «tough». Do not confuse tuff with «tufa», a different soft rock made in water. The slang spelling is not used in school writing.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «tuff» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.