chaffy

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   Like or containing chaff.

   • A mighty fountain […] / Amid whose swift half-intermitted Burst / Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, / Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
   • The burning, pungent scent of newly threshed wheat and a chaffy dust enveloped the village.
   • He chewed the chaffy end of a wheat stalk.
2. 2

   (of bracts, flower head receptacles, scales on cones or catkins) Resembling chaff

   (of bracts, flower head receptacles, scales on cones or catkins) Resembling chaff: papery, husk-like; not fleshy, leafy or herbaceous.

3. 3

   (of an ear of corn/maize) Having imperfectly developed kernels that are not tightly…

   (of an ear of corn/maize) Having imperfectly developed kernels that are not tightly compressed against each other.

4. ›+ 2 more definitionsshow fewer

   1. 4

      Of as little value or substance as chaff

      Of as little value or substance as chaff; worthless.

      • […] thou ly’st, and art / A very theefe in love, a Chaffy Lord / Nor worth the name of villaine:
      • […] the most slight and chaffy opinion, if at a great remove from the present age, contracts such an esteem and veneration, that it out-weighs what is infinitly more ponderous and rational, of a modern date.
   2. 5

      Full of banter, ridicule or badinage.

      • He would talk for an hour; then he would half-draw, and talk again, and often blow his horn when there was no manner of occasion—always so chaffy.

The neighborhood

• neighborscarious