Pronunciations
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/ɹæf/
Noun
A disorderly heap; a jumble; a large quantity
Usage- Countable
- Dated
- Uncountable
- Examples
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A raff of errors.
Bowditch and I (with a raff of books) left town about five in the morning.
lumber or refuse.
Usage- Countable
- Dated
- Uncountable
- Synonyms
- Examples
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More examples (1)
[a hut] was fashioned of the raff of the slough—dead fronds, rotting branches, withered marsh grasses. Its sad gray-green were in the living wilderness like a monument to death.
The common rabble or mob; riffraff.
Usage- plural
- Uncountable
- Examples
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More examples (1)
Jostling with unemployed labourers of the lowest class, ballast-heavers, coal-whippers, brazen women, ragged children, and the raff and refuse of the river, he makes his way with difficulty along […]
A common, crass or low-standing person. Alternatively, a snob.
Usage- Countable
- Dated
- Uncountable
- Synonyms
- Examples
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English raffs of every description
More examples (1)
There is no town of any mark in Europe but it has its little colony of English raffs—men whose names Mr. Hemp the officer reads out periodically at the Sheriffs' Court—young gentlemen of very good family often, only that the latter disowns them; frequenters of billiard-rooms and estaminets, patrons of foreign races and gaming-tables.
Verb
To sweep, blow, snatch, draw, or huddle together; to sweep up.
Usage- Dated
- Examples
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Causes and effects which I thus raffe up together.
they felt no effect of the storm which was raffing at Madrass
More examples (1)
the summer wind flows aloft through the tree-tops, or raffs the last year's leaves in the pits between the gnarled roots
Noun
A three-cornered sail set on a schooner when before the wind.