puet (puet)

A variant of pewit ( a ). The poor fish have enemies enough, as otters, the cormorant, the puet , and the crabber. I. Walton , Complete Angler, i. 2. puff (puf), v . [ puffen , blow, = D.puffen , puff, blow up, boast, = MLG. puffen = G. puf fen , büffen , puff, pop, Dan. puffe , pop, = Sw. puff a , crack, push; cf. F. pouffer , burst out laughing, bouffer , intr. swell, swell out, puff, puff up, rise (as bread), stuff, gorge, tr. blow up, bouffir , intr., swell, be puffed up, OF. buffier , puff , It. buffare , puff; W.pwffio , come in puffs; connected with the noun and interj. puff , ult. imitative of a quick explosive sound. Cf. buff 2.] I. in trans . 1. To blow with quick, intermittent blasts; emit a whiff, as of wind, air, or smoke. Like foggy south pufing with wind and rain. Shak., As you Like it, iii. 5. 50. A new coal is not to be cast on the nitre till the detonation be either quite or almost altogether ended; unle it chance that the puffing matter do blow the coal too soon out of the crucible. Boyle , Physico-Chymical E ay, § 8. Our postilions were sitting silently upon the bench, and we followed their example, lit our pipes, and puffed away. B. Taylor , Northern Travel, p. 86. Where boys and girls pursued their sports, A locomotive puffs and snorts, And gets my malediction. F. Locker, Bramble-Rise. IMG:content-1270.jpg:[blocks in formation] 4834 4. To praise with exaggeration; give undue or servile praise to. This starving public then - through the medium of posters, newspaper advertisements, men in cardboard extinguishers, and other modes of legitimate puffing - had been informed that its cravings were at last to be satisfied, in a grand, new, original melodrama called Pope Clement, or the Cardinal's Collapse. Whyte Melville, White Rose, II. xxviii. A man may be puffed and belauded, envied, ridiculed, counted upon as a tool, and fallen in love with, or at least selected as a future husband, and yet remain virtually unknown. George Eliot , Middle march, xv. Steele puffed him [Est court] in the Spectator, and wept over his decease in the same periodical. Ashton , Social Life in Reign of Queen Anne, II. 19.