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Bluff   /bləf/   Listen
Bluff

noun
1.
A high steep bank (usually formed by river erosion).
2.
Pretense that your position is stronger than it really is.
3.
The act of bluffing in poker; deception by a false show of confidence in the strength of your cards.  Synonym: four flush.



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"Bluff" Quotes from Famous Books



... Oh, I've got you, my friend, got you foul!" said Cleek in reply. "All but ruined by the failure of the gold reefs and the milling and mining companies last autumn, weren't you, and have been playing a bluff game and living on your credit ever since? A pretty little scheme you two beauties hatched up between you to get the old duchess into your clutches, to rob her of the Siva stones, and to have Mrs. Glossop and your ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... I say—"Dat's von very hard case; Can tree jacks beat four kings und some ace? Ven ve hafn't de card Ve must bluff britty hard, Or shoost trow down our ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens

... Roddy came to her and demanded tea, and asked her to state a case. "Bit thick on the old man, isn't it?" said Roddy, who had developed a bluff, straightforward ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... prosperous, too, and shopkeepers, farmers, and all were well off; there was plenty of bread and meat for all, and the foreign nations were afraid to go to war with us. So the English people, on the whole, loved "Bluff King Hal," as they called him, and did not think much about his many wickednesses, or care how many heads he cut off. He died in the year 1547. The changes in his time are generally called the beginning ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge

... southward, or higher up the River than Philipsburg, a military line or chain of posts; going from Stollhofen, a boggy hamlet on the Rhine, with cunning indentations, and learned concatenation of bog and bluff, up into the inaccessibilities,—LINES OF STOLLHOFEN, the name of it,—which well-devised barrier did good service for certain years. It was not till, I think, the fourth year of their existence, year 1707, that Villars, the same ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... had been wrecked on the sand bar off the coast during a terrible storm long ago; he would show us where the bathing was pleasant and safe; he would tell us of the best place for fishing, and probably show us the high bluff a little back from the beach from which the Indian maiden leaped to escape the tomahawk of her enraged lover, and then he would be almost sure to tell us of the secluded spot where it was said Captain Kidd and his pirates once buried a lot ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton

... his sister along the footpath of a bluff, which as children they had often climbed; while the carriage made a long detour in order to reach the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... water, and thus leave the dogs at the end of the trail at a point far removed from his real entrance into it. When they had reached the pond, Jack bade the boy head to the boat. This they found moored under a bluff, and Gabe, pointing upward, said the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... easy way is that of protective resemblance pure and simple, where the animal's colour, form, or attitude becomes like that of its habitat. In which case the animal becomes one with its environment and thus is enabled to go about unnoticed by its enemies or by its prey. The other way is that of bluff, and it includes all inoffensive animals which are capable of assuming attitudes and colours that terrify and frighten. The colours in some cases are really of warning pattern, yet they cannot be considered mimetic ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... Edward, through many a distant place, Had wandering pass'd, a thoughtless ranger; And, cheer'd by a smile from beauty's face, Had laugh'd at the frowning face of danger. Fearless Ned, Careless Ned, Never with foreign dames was a stranger; And huff, Bluff, He laugh'd at ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker

... Breede's letters, and was again interrupted, this time by Markham, Breede's confidential secretary. Markham's approach to Bean was emphatically footed, as that of a man unable to imagine ice being thin under his feet. He was bluff and open, where Tully lurked behind his "not impossibles." He was even jovial now. He ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... Querida laughed, too, saying: "Quite right, Mr. Cameron. It's only bluff with, us; we never work. Life is ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... says I. "You're makin' the bluff that you want to scatter deeds of kindness; but when I point one out, right under your nose, you beef about it like you was bein' frisked for your watch. A hot idea of bein' an angel of mercy you've got, ain't you? Honest now, in your whole career, was you ever guilty of wastin' a kind word, ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... various reasons why the formation of dunes is confined to low shores, and this law is so universal, that when bluffs are surmounted by them, there is always cause to suspect upheaval, or the removal of a sloping beach in front of the bluff, after the dunes were formed. Bold shores are usually without a sufficient beach for the accumulation of large deposits; they are commonly washed by a sea too deep to bring up sand from its bottom; their abrupt ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... the summit, Bet and Kit were almost hysterical from laughing. Bet put the gun down gingerly. "I wonder what I would have done, if they had called my bluff!" she exclaimed. ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm

... the boat to Bluff Point; and the shore was so elevated here, that the skipper stood farther out into the lake so that he might not lose the wind. The Goldwing behaved so well, that Dory was beginning to have a great deal of confidence ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic

... crossed the plain in the teeth of the howling drift, and cautiously approached the bluff referred to by Roy, and from ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne

... thinking of a painful clash in the parish. It came on this wise. Our rector was one day called to attend the funeral of a little child but a few weeks old, the daughter of neighbors of ours. The father was a big-bodied, big-hearted, big-voiced, successful man of business, well liked for his bluff cordiality and generosity, who went to church because his wife went. The mother was a sweet, kindly, delicate woman, the daughter of a clergyman, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... the Virginian, with entire ease. For he also knew when to employ the plain truth as a bluff. "You'd ought to write to Tommy's mother, Lin, and tell her what a dare-devil her son is gettin' to be. She would cut off his allowance and bring him home, and you would have the ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister

... wouldn't put it that way," Cub replied; "but I don't like to see anybody make a bluff at anything and not make good. Now, we've started out with a glorious bluff at some very clever rascality, and it looks as if it's going to prove to be just an ordinary ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield

... Truly sledging in such weather is great. Mounts Discovery and Morning, which we gradually closed, looked fine in the general panorama of mountains. We are now nearly abreast the north end of the Bluff. We all came up to camp together this morning: it looked like a meet of the hounds, and ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... and startling; relieved of strain, the springs snapped and whined, there was a violent oscillation of the back, a shudder convulsed the thing, and it sprang after him, much as a tame rabbit thumps its feet upon the ground in an effort to bluff a kitten. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... and mid tea-cups! Stupendous change, let us tell you, worthy friend, who never yet set sail where sharks and other strange sea-cattle bob their noses above the brine,—who never lived forty days in the bowels of a ship, unable to hold your head up to the captain's bluff "good morning" or the steward's cheery "good night." Sir Philip Sidney discourses of a riding-master he encountered in Vienna, who spoke so eloquently of the noble animal he had to deal with, that he almost persuaded Sir Philip to wish himself a horse. We have known ancient mariners expatiate ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... littered with a spoil of leaves; departing from these "points" she regularly crossed the river every five miles, avoiding the "bight" of the great binds and thus escaping the strong current; sometimes she went out and skirted a high "bluff" sand-bar in the middle of the stream, and occasionally followed it up a little too far and touched upon the shoal water at its head—and then the intelligent craft refused to run herself aground, but "smelt" ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... Lucien with a bluff German heartiness that concealed his dangerous subtlety; "well, so you have made your peace with Mme. d'Espard; she is delighted with you, and we all know," he added, looking round the group, "how difficult it is ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... started to walk up the beach; but she did not get far. There was a private dock running out beyond low-water mark just below the very first bungalow. She saw several men coming down the steps from the top of the bluff to the shore and the bathhouses; a big camera was set up on the sands. This must be Bozewell's bungalow, she decided; the one engaged by the ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... Hills where thirty-five years ago there modestly nestled on the ridge beside the river only Forest Ranger Theobold's bungalow, built of mud and covered with grass thatch and bamboo rats, there is now a regular hill station lighted by electricity, a modern sanatorium high up on the bluff, a club, golf links, and other modern improvements. In my day there were exactly four guns on the Animallais. Now there are probably one hundred; and it is easy to guess how much big game remains ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... in more leisurely fashion now, and soon reached the foot of a high grassy bluff on the left-hand side of the river. They climbed the steep slope here, and so weary were they that that night they did not put up the tents at all, but lay down, each wrapped in his blanket, as soon as they had ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough

... death. The first victim of the war, Colonel Ellsworth, was a personal friend, and his murder was a personal affliction. There were others that came near to him. Colonel E. D. Baker, an old friend and neighbor of Lincoln, the man who had introduced him at his inaugural, was killed at Ball's Bluff Oct. 21, 1861. Baker's personal courage made him conspicuous and marked him out as a special target for the enemy's aim. While gallantly leading a charge, he fell, pierced almost simultaneously by four bullets. It fell upon Lincoln like the death of ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... his party's nomination; and it was here he took counsel with his Senate colleagues. Being consulted, the word of those grave ones proved the very climax of flattery. Senators Vice and Price and Dice and Ice, and Stuff and Bluff and Gruff and Muff, and Loot and Coot and Hoot and Toot, and Wink and Blink and Drink and Kink—statesmen all and of snow-capped eminence in the topography of party—endorsed Senator Hanway's ambition without a wrinkle of distrust to ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... river, still swollen by melting mountain snow, was a hundred feet from the stockade gate, and on its bank stood the log cavalry stables. Below, a scant half mile away, were the only trees visible, a scraggly grove of cottonwoods, while down the face of the bluff and across the flat ran the slender ribbon of trail. Monotonous, unchanging, it was a desolate picture to watch day after day in ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish

... ran up sharply in a minute bluff, with the soft outline of underlying chalk, covered with small thorn-thickets; and it was all encircled with small, close woods, where we heard the pheasants scamper. We found an old, slow, bovine man, with a cheerful face, who readily threw aside some ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the quality of the textile depend not only on conditions of the soil, but on locality. In the river flood-plains of the southern United States the yield is about two bales per acre; on the bluff lands it is but little more than one, unless unusual care is taken in the preparation of the land. The islands off the Carolina coast produce a very fine long-staple variety, commercially known as sea island cotton. ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... described with such gusto Queen Elizabeth's five days' stay at Cambridge, what wouldst thou not have given, hadst thou lived in the reign of Victoria, to have been in her train this night? Shades more formidable of good Queen Bess herself, Bluff King Hal, Margaret Countess of Richmond, and that other unhappy Margaret of Anjou, what would you have said of this simple ramble? In truth it was a scene from the world of romance, even without the music and the lady at the lattice. An ideal Queen and an ideal Prince, a thin disguise ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... graymarie, he can, on a spring night, just as the moon has entered her last quarter, and the first note from the belfry of the chapel in the frith has proclaimed the arrival of midnight, take his stand upon Blentford's Bluff and peer into the dark and sombre depths of Kinder, when he will hear the hooting of the barn owl on Anna rocks, the unearthly screech of the landrail as he ploughs his way through the unmown grass in search of his mate, the scream of the curlew and chatter ...
— Buxton and its Medicinal Waters • Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet

... and extending thence to the north of Arras. Probably the Germans imagined that this extension had weakened our lines at Ypres; and on 8 February they began a bombardment which developed into a fierce struggle for Hooge and The Bluff on the Ypres-Commines Canal. The ground lost was mostly recovered by counter-attacks on 2 and 27 March and 3 April, but it could not all be held against further German attacks later in the month. Similarly some gains on the Vimy Ridge in the middle of May were lost again on the 21st, and ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... Flat Rock, keeping his prisoner covered as carefully as he could the while. But, though Keller came down the steep bluff with infinite pains, the rough going offered a chance of escape to one so reckless as Weaver, of which he made not the least attempt to avail himself. Instead, he smiled cynically and waited with his hand in the air, as bidden. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... the volunteers, and of that number I was one, were sent on through Huntsville so as to get on the Indians in another direction. After we passed Huntsville, we struck the Tennessee River at Melton's Bluff. The river is here about two miles wide, and has so rough a bottom in many places as to be dangerous. At this place we left some of the horses with their feet held fast in the crevices of the rocks; ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... storing it. Every here and there the stroller had a glimpse of the Casco tossing in the narrow anchorage below; and beyond he had ever before him the dark amphitheatre of the Atuona mountains and the cliffy bluff that closes it to seaward. The trade-wind moving in the fans made a ceaseless noise of summer rain; and from time to time, with the sound of a sudden and distant drum-beat, the surf would burst ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... termed, in nautical parlance, an "hermaphrodite brig," of about one hundred and fifty tons burden; and had been engaged, for some twelve or fifteen years, in the West India trade. This vessel could not with propriety be regarded as a model of grace and beauty, but gloried in bluff bows, a flat bottom, and a high quarter-deck; carried a large cargo for her tonnage, and moved heavily and ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... up in the hills," said the former, knowing that one bluff was as good as another. Skookum growled and sniffed at the enemy's legs. The prisoner made a quick ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... uphill. The meadow through which we were passing sloped to an oaken fence, stoutly constructed to save the cattle from a perilous fall. For on its farther side the ground fell away sheer, so that at this point a bluff formed one high wall of the sunken road for which we were making. The Thatcher, I remembered, stood immediately opposite to the rough grass-grown steps, hewn years ago for the convenience of such passengers as we. There was ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... pushed forward bravely toward an ice-wall that stretched across the top of the bay from one high shore to the other. This wall of ice, a precipitous bluff or palisade, is computed to be from two hundred to five hundred feet in height. It is certainly nowhere less than two hundred, but most of it far nearer five hundred feet above sea level, rising directly out of it, overhanging it, and chilling the air perceptibly. Picking our ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... till the 10th. On the morning of that day, we were preparing to send some of the people in search of our two gentlemen, when we perceived two large canoes, full of Indians, coming toward the vessel: they were of the Chinook village, which was situated at the foot of a bluff on the north side of the river, and were bringing back Messrs. M'Dougal and Stuart. We made known to these gentlemen the report we had heard on the 8th from the natives, and they informed us that it had been in fact well founded; that on the ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... about the whole business," said he. "Once or twice I asked Bill or Gabe about it, but I never could get any satisfaction. I sometimes think carrying that message was only a bluff, and that the Germans were merely trying to test out Bill and Gabe, to see if they could not get them ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)

... probably, has yielded more than the farm and immediate neighborhood of Dr. C. C. Abbott (heretofore referred to), at Trenton, New Jersey. This farm occupies a bluff and wide meadows facing the Delaware River. It was a location unexcelled in advantages for the mild-mannered, sunshine-loving Leni-Lenape. On the dry high ground they could build their lodges underneath great trees and find themselves ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... lost all spirit of fun in the contest, even to Slivers, who strove, however, to see it through in a bluff, ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... against Lady Jane Grey, almost before the ink was dry with which he had solemnly registered his name to serve her, has long ago been numbered amongst the things that were. The archers of Mile-end, with their chains of gold, have departed: the spot on which the tent stood, where bluff Hal regaled himself after having witnessed their sports, is now covered with mean-looking houses: as one has said, "the poetry of ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... thoughtful man in command—it wanted dash and bluff. It could have been done in those early days. The landing WAS a success—a brilliant, blinding success—but it stuck at the very moment when it should have rushed forward. It was no one's fault if you understand. It was sheer luck. It just didn't "come ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave

... But the squire's bluff florid face was pinched with anxiety, and worn with the effort of being deaf to the footsteps of fate as he said these words which ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... changed for the better as anyone could wish. The arrogance was gone. In its place was something better—a sure-footed confidence in his ability to talk—and this was a confidence based on real ability—not on bluff. He was no longer nervous and irritable—and in fact, before leaving, he had won his way into the hearts of his associates to the extent that all were sorry when he left and felt that they had made the acquaintance of a ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue

... and chill. It was rainin. The only persons there when I entered was a fine bluff old gentleman who was talking in a excited manner to a ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 5 • Charles Farrar Browne

... voice on the bluff March gale; We severed have been too long, But now we are done with a worn-out tale— The tale of an ancient wrong— And our friendship shall last long as love doth last and be ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan

... thereafter, the English have everywhere had important losses to show at sea—some 200 ships lost since the beginning of the war, according to the latest statements of the Allies—so that even they themselves no longer dare to talk about the "German bluff." ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... and became Giddings's partner. He was sent to the United States Senate in 1851 as an antislavery Whig, and he continued to stand four-square for freedom there during nearly twenty years. He was frank, bluff, even harsh in his speech and manner, but kind at heart, and it is told of him that once when he discovered a wretched neighbor robbing his corn crib, he moved out of sight that the man might not know he had been caught in the misdeed to ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... modified by a touch of doubt. I could see that these words, by lifting the accusation from the wholly absurd to the somewhat plausible, had impressed him. Once again I was gripped by the uneasy feeling that Sam had an unsuspected card to play. This might be bluff, but it ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... sobs, hurried out into the gloom, into the descending floods, toward the rushing torrents—drenched to the skin, on she passed toward the railroad to the well remembered foot-log, only to find the waters rushing along high above and beyond the place where it had been. Then she thought of the great bluff rising to the west of her home and extending southward toward the railroad track, and she determined to ascend it and reach the bridge over this barrier to the waters. Need I recount how she struggled on and up through the thick oak undergrowth, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... of hope and also a sort of pride. His eyes scanned the horizon with a glance of defiance; he listened for sounds in the air. It was now nine o'clock; the moon was beginning to cast its light upon the margin of the forest and to illumine the little bluff on which they stood. The position struck him as dangerous and he left it, fearful of being seen. But no suspicious noise troubled the peace of the beautiful valley encircled on this side by the forest of Nodesme. Marthe, exhausted and trembling, was awaiting some explanation of their ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac

... Bluff King Harry had no thought of doing anything else. The doubt which shook the souls of some of his followers, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... a merry party at mess that night. General Sir Reginald Bassett was a man of the bluff soldierly order who knew how to command respect from his inferiors while at the same time he set them at their ease. There was no pomp and circumstance about him, yet in the whole of the Indian Empire there ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... British sons, arouse! And all who stand to Freedom's cause, While sing of the impending wars, And England's bluff old Charley. I'll tell how British seamen brave, Of Russian foes will clear the wave, Old England's credit for to save, Led on by ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... all. I have quite as snug a cove, near the creek bluff at Clawbonny, and will build a house for you there, you shall not tell from a ship's cabin; that would be ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... offer of a smaller sum the Count would possibly bluff. But to a Knight of Industry, as he knew the Count to be, a certain thousand pounds would be a great temptation. And after all to a wealthy Englishwoman what was a ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... the Rajah," he said half-musingly. "In fact, I know him, by sight. He is what the magazinists are fond of calling an 'industry colonel,' a born leader who has fought his way to the front. If the Quartz Creek row is anything more than a stiff bluff on the part of the C. G. R. it will be quite as well for us if Mr. Somerville Darrah is safely at the other side of the continent—and well out of ordinary ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde

... swirling into deep, quiet pools, where the good salmon goes to smoke his pipe after meals. Get such a stream amid fields of breast-high crops surrounded by hills of pines, throw in where you please quiet water, long-fenced meadows, and a hundred-foot bluff just to keep the scenery from growing too monotonous, and you will get some faint notion of the Clackamas. The weir had been erected to pen the Chenook salmon from going further up-stream. We could see them, twenty or thirty pounds, by the score in the deep ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... a month scarcely fit to live. Abhorring all personalities, we repent having sometimes given in to this national abuse of November. We know him well—and though we admit at once that he is no beauty, and that his manners are at the best bluff, at the worst repulsive, yet on those who choose to cultivate his acquaintance, his character continues so to mellow and ameliorate itself, that they come at last, if not to love, to like him, and even to prefer ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... common English spring flowers, besides more useful things, potatoes, etc. The river was about two hundred yards broad just here, and though it foamed below us, we could also see it stretching away in the distance almost like a lake, till a great bluff hid it from our eyes. Overhead the trees were alive with flocks of wild pigeons, ka-kas, parroquets, and other birds, chattering and twittering incessantly and as we stood on the steep bank and looked down, I don't think a minute passed without a brace of wild ducks flying past, grey, blue, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... dangers and hardships of the wilderness and the river, it seemed as if we had reached the end of our journey, though we were over two thousand miles from the Atlantic. Pebas is situated on a high clay bluff beside the Ambiyacu, a mile above its entrance into the Maranon. Excepting Mr. Hauxwell, the Peruvian governor, and two or three other whites, the inhabitants are Indians of the Orejones and Yagua tribes. The exportations are hammocks, sarsaparilla, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... which ran below the doctor's house. The moon swam clear; the cliffs and mountains in this strong light lay utterly deserted; but the house, from its station on the top of the long slope and close under the bluff, not only shone abroad from every window like a place of festival, but from the great chimney at the west end poured forth a coil of smoke so thick and so voluminous, that it hung for miles along the windless night air, and its shadow lay ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... were setting, and said he was going in to town to see some friends; and as he starts off he laughs an' says, 'This don't look as if I was afraid of seeing people, does it?' but Dad says it was just bluff that made him do it, and Dad thinks that if he hadn't said what he did, this Mr. Carleton wouldn't have left his room ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... the old farmer, so gruff and bluff-looking—with his stout square figure, his weather-beaten face, short grey hair, and dark bushy eyebrows—to the slight and graceful child, her aristocratic beauty set off by exactly the same style of paraphernalia that had adorned the ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford

... Ellen would have found in either case difficulty about obtaining employment, because she did not belong to the union, if for no other reason. At Briggs's she encountered the proprietor himself in the office, and he dismissed her with a bluff, almost brutal, peremptoriness which hurt her cruelly, although she held up her head high as she left. Briggs turned to a foreman who was standing by before she was well ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... persons to whom these sums marked "debt of honour" are due.' His reply came quickly, and was a little aggressive; he thought this might be a good time to make a bluff: ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... the waves, which rise with incredible celerity before the gales. The slow ships of commerce, indeed, are often days in traversing the distance between one port and another, for they wait for the wind to blow abaft, and being heavy, deeply laden, built broad and flat-bottomed for shallows, and bluff at the bows, they drift like logs of timber. In canoes the hunters, indeed, sometimes pass swiftly from one place to another, venturing farther out to sea than the ships. They could pass yet more quickly were it not ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... there was Kenny, grinning contemptuously at us. He'd called our bluff and won out. Now the shoe was ...
— The Man the Martians Made • Frank Belknap Long

... eye encountered a head and shoulders portrait of his father, Sir George Sinclair: an honest, bluff, unimaginative face: yet suddenly, arrestingly, it commanded his attention. Checking his walk, he stood regarding it: and his heart went out to the kindly old man in a quite unusual wave of sympathetic understanding. He saw ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... know men to-day who spend every dollar they earn for drink, and eat nothing but free lunches, handed out with their drinks. That was what was the matter with me. All I wanted was drink. The young man had called my bluff, and I had nothing to show but lies. I sat there wondering how I was going to get out of this hole. I was looking at the man and he at me, when the little good that was in me cropped out, and looking him square in the eye I said, "Young fellow, I've lied to you. I could not eat the ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney

... followed Mr. Gilroy and Yhon across the mouth of the Marion River, and rounded Woods' Point. Across Boulder Bay, to Bluff Point, they paddled, and carefully rounding this point they entered Outlet Bay. Then the usual route was taken up the bay until they reached ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... brooks the first thin blooms of the asters began to show, like a veil of blown smoke. In open patches, on the hillsides the goldenrod burned orange and the fireweed spread its washes of violet pink. Somewhere in the top of a tall poplar, crowning the summit of a glaring white bluff, a locust twanged incessantly its strident string. Mysteriously, imperceptibly, without sound and without warning, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... links were being joined together in the chain of evidence against O'Reilly, the man who had followed Angel into the Limited—the man against whom Clo had presently to try her wits. What concerned her most was that her first attempt at bluff had failed. Something in Peterson's manner forced her to believe that he had indeed served out his full sentence, and for the moment had nothing to fear from the police. Clodagh hid her ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... help was a serious one. The schoolhouse was placed on the edge of a bluff where the ground dropped suddenly many feet, and strangely enough, all the windows were on that side, so that no one could climb out of a window, and, what was worse, those inside could not attract attention if any one should pass. The windows ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller

... was a bluff, hearty man, with the personal magnetism which goes with the making of a successful physician. He had mounted the stairs quietly but rapidly, evidently ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... could neither tell the commonly accepted truth out of respect to the deceased, nor lies out of regard to morality. However, one favorable point in the character of the deceased, upon which people were agreed, was his geniality and bluff heartiness of good-humor. That the minister so enlarged and displayed to the light of admiration that he almost made of it the aureole of a saint. He was obliged then to take refuge in the broad ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... man of moderate stature, who had lost the sight of one eye. The other, being covered with a green shade, gave him an ill look. His manner, however, was hearty, and showed a bluff, off-hand cordiality, as he welcomed the party to the hospitalities of the Travellers' Rest. He was familiarly called "Larry," by Fletcher, who greeted him like ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger

... speed on foot, that they might, if possible, catch an early glimpse of him. The most sporting characters among the nobility and gentry of the country, fighting-peers, fire-eaters, snuff-candle squires, members of the hell-fire and jockey clubs, gaugers, gentlemen tinners, bluff yeomen, laborers, cudgel-players, parish pugilists, men of renown within a district of ten square miles, all jostled each other in hurrying to see, and if possible to have speech of, the Dead Boxer. Not a word was spoken that day, except with reference to him, nor a conversation ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... rocky bluff on the coast of Lanai there is a cave whose only entrance is through the vortex of a whirlpool. Its floor gradually rises from the water, and is the home of crabs, polypi, sting-rays, and other noisome creatures ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... day he never again went near that particular meadow; neither, though for days he called to her in his loneliness, did he search any more for the mother who had so suddenly disappeared out of his life. Standing on the edge of a bluff, in the fading sunset, he would thrust his head and neck out straight and bellow his sonorous appeal. Then he would stop and listen long for an answer. And as he called, evening after evening in vain, a deeper, surer tone came into his voice, a more self-reliant, masterful ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... working she heard the tramp of a horse's hoofs, and looking up saw the big bluff Squire riding toward her. The big Squire was very fond of children, and whenever he rode near the little white cottage he stopped to have a word with Mary. He was old and bald-headed, and he had side-whiskers that were very red in color and very short and stubby; but there was ever ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum

... the north a long chain of lofty rugged cliffs mark the bearing of the shore in that direction, and turning southwards, the spectator beholds, seven or eight miles distant, the spacious harbour of Botany Bay, beyond which a high bluff range of hills extends along to the south in the direction towards Illawarra. Westward one vast forest is to be seen, varied only by occasional openings which cultivation and the axe have made on the tops of some of the highest ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... get along with my boy," said the bluff city merchant. "Of one thing you may be assured, your scholarship won't be severely taxed in educating him. Walter is a pretty good boy, but he ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger

... as I have since learnt, had the conscience to contend that we left the ship sooner than was necessary, and have suffered themselves to be sued for the sums they had severally insured. It was a little after midday when we reached the town, which is perched on a high bluff, overlooking the coasts, and contains about a thousand houses, built of bamboo, and covered with palm leaves. Our dress, appearance, language, and the manner of our arrival, excited great surprise among the natives, and the liveliest ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... Porte that the naval and military authorities in this country had expressed the opinion that successful attack upon the Dardanelles was virtually impracticable, and that H.M. Government had endorsed this view. Tell the Turk that, and our trump card was gone. We could then no longer bluff the Ottoman Government in the event of war with feints of operations against the Straits—the very course which I believe would have been adopted in 1914-1915, had the Admiralty War Staff and the General Staff considered the question together without Cabinet ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... difficult to see how German statesmen regarded the situation? Russia, in their eyes, was playing a game of bluff, and strong measures against her were in the interest of Germany. But, though under no illusion as to German preparations, M. Sazonof offered on July 30 to stop all military preparations if Austria 'would eliminate from her ultimatum to Servia points which violate ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History

... began in his harsh lawyer's voice, "don't think for a moment you can bluff me. These men have their orders and at the first show of violence I have told them to shoot you dead. Now regarding this claim, formerly known as the Old Juan, you have no legal right to the same. In the first ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... Loudly, wildly, the rude sounds assaulted the stillness until the quiet seemed hopelessly shattered by the din. Softly, tamely, the sounds drifted away in the clear distance; through groves of live oak, thickets of greasewood, juniper, manzanita and sage; into canyon and wash; from bluff and ledge; along slope and spur and shoulder; over ridge and saddle and peak; fainting, dying—the impotent sounds of man's passing sank into the stillness and were lost. When the team halted for a brief rest it was in a moment as if the silence had never been broken. Grim, awful, the ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... for Duperre to bluff, but they would, I felt convinced, eventually be found. The police, not content with searching the personal belongings of my friend, took up the floor-boards, and even stripped some paper from the wall and carefully examined every article of furniture. Afterwards they went to my room at the ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux

... the morning when the dancers, bent on getting something to eat, adjourned the dancing for half an hour. And it was at this moment that Jack Kearns suggested poker. Jack Kearns was a big, bluff-featured man, who, along with Bettles, had made the disastrous attempt to found a post on the head-reaches of the Koyokuk, far inside the Arctic Circle. After that, Kearns had fallen back on his posts at Forty Mile and Sixty Mile and changed the direction of his ventures by sending ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... flats. A large portion of the flats was formerly of little value, in consequence of being kept wet by a shallow stream which ran through, it, and which, together with several springs that issue from the sandy bluff on the south side of the flats, kept the ground marshy, and unfit for cultivation. By deepening the channel of the stream, and conducting most of the springs into it, many acres, which were formerly almost worthless, have been made worth 125 dollars per acre. They have also, by deepening the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... interstate he lapped up flattery like a thirsty pup, but his bluff was that it was only for the ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... trans-Mississippi country, and effectually barring the free navigation of the river. Both the cities named were strongly fortified, but Vicksburg, on the east bank, by its natural situation on a bluff two hundred feet high, rising almost out of the stream, was unassailable from the river front. Farragut had, indeed, in midsummer passed up and down before it with little damage from its fire; but, in return, his own guns could no ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... expect to go away next week. Of course, it may be another bluff, but somehow I think we really are going now, as we have been fitted out with a "field service-dressing," a packet containing two bandages and safety pins, which we have to sew into the right-hand bottom corner of our tunics. We have also been given our active service pay book, a little account ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene

... intimated, the mariners on the shore who watched her movements shook their heads in distrust as they communed among themselves, in very indifferent Italian, concerning her destination and object. This observation, with its accompanying discourse, occurred on the rocky bluff above the town of Porto Ferrajo, in the Island of Elba, a spot that has since become so renowned as the capital of the mimic dominion of Napoleon. Indeed, the very dwelling which was subsequently used by ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Butler, whom I remember as a child of seven wearing a blue leather belt with a brass buckle, and hated and envied by all the boys on account of it. He was a nephew of General Ben Butler and fought gallantly at Ball's Bluff and in several other actions of the Civil War. He is dead, long and ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... On coming within five miles of the shore at eleven o'clock, we found it to be low and mostly sandy; and that the bluff head, which had been taken for the north end of an island, was part of a ridge of hills rising at Cape Schanck. We then bore away westward, in order to trace the land round the head of ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... lest in the delay the Indians should have accomplished their object. When she reached her horse, she found near by a heap of dead and struggling buffalo, which in their headlong race had run over the bluff front of the boulder. When she resumed her gallop she observed that the great amplitude of rich grasses was like unto a ploughed field. The herbage had been literally crushed into mire, and this the innumerable hoofs had churned up with the soft rich ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins

... on his other side, looking at the shores that were both familiar and unfamiliar. Familiar when he saw Mount Vernon on its imposing bluff; unfamiliar because no domes or obelisks were to be seen; no airfield, and no Pentagon. But the sweet green land itself was there, holding out its welcoming and individual scent of fields and rich ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson

... Jim. "That's the way I like to hear you talk. And don't you let Sim Dobley, or either of the Lascalla Brothers, bluff you. I'm running this show, not them! If they make any trouble you ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum

... with his pistol a spruce partridge (grouse); it was the first seen by us on the trip. Together with a yellowlegs George had shot, it seasoned a pot of pea soup. We camped that night on a bluff, barren point, and Hubbard named it "Partridge Point" in bonour ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... along the top of the low chalk downs which bound my southern horizon. Its name is a corruption of the word Mary—Mary's way—for there was an ancient shrine of pilgrimage dedicated to the Virgin Mary that stood on the broad low bluff still known as Chapel Hill, where the downs sink into the well-watered plain. No trace of the shrine exists, and it is not known where it stood. Perhaps its walls have been built into the little irregular pile of farm-buildings which stands close to where the way ends. In a field ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... on, he reached the Strait of Camsoke [Footnote: Camsoke means, "There is a high bluff on the opposite side of the river."—S. T. Rand.] (M.), or Canso, and to cross over again sang the song which wins the whales, and one of these rising, carried him to the opposite shore. Thence he made the circle of Oona-mah-gik, keeping round ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... somewhat limited, and if possible I knew less of the difficult and narrow exit from Bolinas Bay than I did of Captain Booden. So with great trepidation I jammed the helm hard down, and the obedient little Lively Polly fell off easily, and we were over the bar and gliding gently along under the steep bluff of the Mesa, whose rocky edge, rising sheer from the beach and crowned with dry grass, rose far above the pennon of the little schooner. I did not intend to deceive Captain Booden, but being anxious to work my way down to San Francisco, ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... 115 What of the woman? Mrs. Launce speaks for herself. The game of cross-bluff. An invitation bluntly refused. The turn of the prisoners. On the surface. "You are eager for death." The mystery of the Launces. "You are the Countess of Denby!" "Save your denials for use before a German court." Dave invited on deck. "You ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock

... held a shot-gun in his hand and, presenting it at me, swore he would kill me if I dared to proceed any further. My foreman, who knew him well, warned me to be careful; there seemed no doubt that he meant what he said; he was too mad to dispute with, and so! well, his bluff, if it were a bluff, carried the day and I ordered the mares to be turned loose. As it turned out afterwards it was well I did so, as further legal complications would have resulted. But as I began to think of and remember the time that had been spent and the amount of hard work in ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson

... up leaped of a sudden the sun, And against him the cattle stood black every one, To stare through the mist at us galloping past, And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last, With resolute shoulders, each butting away The haze, as some bluff river ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... new to one used to Oxford, and to London, and to little else of England. And all was delightful. Even Mark's guardian seemed to her delightful. For Gordy, when absolutely forced to face an unknown woman, could bring to the encounter a certain bluff ingratiation. His sister, too, Mrs. Doone, with her faded ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... superior wisdom, held out a five-franc piece, but the driver shrugged his shoulders disdainfully. He saw that the moment had come to bluster so he descended from his box fully prepared to carry out his bluff. He started in to abuse the two Americans whom in his ignorance he ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein



Words linked to "Bluff" :   feigning, fright, Poplar Bluff, pretense, deceit, affright, direct, cards, steep, frighten, pretence, deception, scare, bank, dissembling, go, dissimulation, card game, move



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