n.
- Botany. Thin dry bracts or scales, especially:
- The dry bracts enclosing mature grains of wheat and some other cereal grasses, removed during threshing.
- The scales or bracts borne on the receptacle among the small individual flowers of many plants in the composite family.
- Finely cut straw or hay used as fodder.
- Trivial or worthless matter: ignored the picky, unimportant criticisms that were just a lot of chaff.
- Strips of metal, foil, or glass fiber with a metal content, cut into various lengths and having varying frequency responses, that are used to reflect electromagnetic energy as a radar countermeasure. These materials, usually dropped from aircraft, also can be deployed from shells or rockets.
[Middle English chaf, from Old English ceaf.]
chaffy chaf'fy adj.chaff2 (chăf)
v., chaffed, chaff·ing, chaffs. v.tr.
To make fun of in a good-natured way; tease.
v.intr.
To engage in playful teasing. See synonyms at banter.
n.
Good-natured teasing; banter.
[Possibly alteration of CHAFE or CHAFF1.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
