ruff1

noun

• 1a projecting starched frill worn around the neck, characteristic of Elizabethan and Jacobean costume.

• 2a projecting or conspicuously colored ring of feathers or hair around the neck of a bird or mammal.

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

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