ruff1

noun

• 1a projecting starched frill worn round the neck, characteristic of Elizabethan and Jacobean costume: an Elizabethan ruff

• 2a projecting or conspicuously coloured ring of feathers or hair round the neck of a bird or mammal: a ruff of long pointed feathers my nape stirred like the ruff of a dog in a thunderstorm

• 3a pigeon of a domestic breed with a ruff of feathers on its neck.

• 4 (plural same or ruffs) a North Eurasian wading bird, the male of which has a large variously coloured ruff and ear tufts in the breeding season, used in display.

  • Philomachus pugnax, family Scolopacidae; the female is called a reeve