Contextualizebeta

crufty

adj

Etymology

From cruft + -y. Arose after 1959, presumably mid-1960s. Perhaps influenced by cruddy, crusty.

  1. derived from villūtus — “having shaggy hair”
  2. derived from velu — “hairy, furry”
  3. derived from vluwe
  4. compounded as cruft — “crust + fluff”
  5. suffixed as crufty — “cruft + y”

Definitions

  1. Relating to or containing cruft.

  2. Poorly built and overly-complex, and unpleasant.

  3. Unrefined, dirty or worn.

    • All these years I been living with you we en't go nowhere. You want a beast of burden, not a woman. Because you is a big, crufty, niggerman with the strength of an ox and a mind big and empty like midday sky you think me is the same.
    • I thought I caught him sneering at Kevin and me, in our crufty pants and shoes, but I couldn't be sure.

The neighborhood

Derived

cruftiness

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for crufty. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA