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# duff

«duff» in Mova's school dictionary: **bad, useless or not working: a duff battery, a duff idea** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

adjective (duff — informal, UK); noun (the duff — slang); verb («duff up» — slang, UK)

### meaning for a pupil

1) (informal, UK) Duff means bad, useless or not working: a duff battery, a duff idea. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/duff/#m1)

2) (slang, mainly US) Your duff is your bottom; «get off your duff» means stop being lazy. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/duff/#m2)

3) (slang, UK) To duff someone up is to beat them up. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/duff/#m3)

4) A duff is an old-fashioned word for a kind of steamed pudding, as in plum duff. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/duff/#m4)

### sense in the lessons

It appears in casual talk and stories with real speech, telling the reader that something is faulty or poor. Phrases: a duff note (a wrong note in music), duff advice, get off your duff, duff up.

### examples

- This torch is duff — the batteries must be flat. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/duff/#x1)
- He played a duff note in the middle of the song. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/duff/#x2)
- That was a duff idea, Tom. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/duff/#x3)
- (US slang) Get off your duff and help me clean up! [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/duff/#x4)
- (UK slang) The bully threatened to duff him up. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/duff/#x5)
- We got a duff calculator that kept giving wrong answers. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/duff/#x6)
- Grandma made plum duff for pudding. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/duff/#x7)

### note

Informal or slang in all modern senses; not for exam writing — say «faulty», «useless» or «poor». «Duff up» is about violence; it is not a nice phrase. Not related to «dough».

### In the corpora

- ["Up the duff" means pregnant (British slang, rather rude).](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/11-pregnancy-and-birth/5/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «duff» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/duff/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.