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Whiff vs Chiff - What's the difference?

whiff | chiff |

As nouns the difference between whiff and chiff

is that whiff is a waft; a brief, gentle breeze; a light gust of air while chiff is the characteristic sound made as part of the attack of certain notes on the organ.

As a verb whiff

is to waft.

As an adjective whiff

is having a strong or unpleasant odor.

whiff

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • A waft; a brief, gentle breeze; a light gust of air
  • An odour carried briefly through the air
  • * (rfdate)
  • everyone has always known, widely promiscuous heterosexual men have, as I say, a whiff of the bathhouse about them.
  • * 1922 , (Virginia Woolf), Chapter 2
  • A whiff of rotten eggs had vanquished the pale clouded yellows which came pelting across the orchard and up Dods Hill and away on to the moor
  • A short inhalation of breath, especially of smoke from a cigarette or pipe
  • * Longfellow
  • The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe, / And a scornful laugh laughed he.
  • (figurative) a slight sign of something; a glimpse
  • * 2012 , Ben Smith, Leeds United 2-1 Everton [http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/19632366]
  • This was a rare whiff of the big-time for a club whose staple diet became top-flight football for so long - the glamour was in short supply, however. Thousands of empty seats and the driving Yorkshire rain saw to that.
  • (baseball) A strike (from the batter’s perspective)
  • The megrim, a fish .
  • Synonyms

    * puff * sniff * waft

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To waft.
  • To sniff.
  • (baseball) To strike out.
  • (slang) to attempt to strike and miss, especially being off-balance/vulnerable after missing.
  • To throw out in whiffs; to consume in whiffs; to puff.
  • To carry or convey by a whiff, or as by a whiff; to puff or blow away.
  • * Ben Jonson
  • Old Empedocles, who, when he leaped into Etna, having a dry, sear body, and light, the smoke took him, and whiffed him up into the moon.

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (colloquial) Having a strong or unpleasant odor.
  • * 2002: Jim Rozen, Way oil in rec.crafts.metalworking
  • Whoo boy that gear oil is pretty whiff . If you actually do this, spend the extra money for the synthetic gear oil as it will not have as bad a sulfur stink as the regular stuff.

    Derived terms

    * whiffle

    chiff

    English

    Noun

    (-)
  • (music) The characteristic sound made as part of the attack of certain notes on the organ.
  • *1998 , Fletcher, N.H. and Rossing, T.D, The Physics of Musical Instruments , Springer Science & Business Media, page 570
  • *:In all these adjustments, the voicer must have regard to the steady sound of the pipe, to its promptness of speech, and to the presence or absence of any desired starting transient or chiff .