Basic Guidelines For English Spellings
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1Used to convey the suddenness with which someone or something disappears.
‘once you've used it, poof—it's gone’- ‘Sachi and I were still arguing about completely pointless things like what it means to fall head over heels in love, when all of the sudden, poof!’
- ‘It is said that when a neighbor accidentally killed Gotti's young son when he struck the poor kid with his car, that the neighbor subsequently disappeared, poof!’
- ‘Within half an hour, the persistent pain in my right hip joint just disappeared - poof! - and has yet to return.’
- ‘We were best friends in 7th grade, and then suddenly - poof!’
- ‘But the task force renames those data ‘metrics’ and - poof!’
- ‘No explanation of why, no apology, just gone - poof!’
- ‘Maybe the kid just wandered off and ate a mushroom and - poof!’
- ‘The evangelist of kitsch took one more bow, waved, and vanished - poof!’
- ‘Well I tell you that once there was a 1500 word piece ready for the paper, and then - poof!’
- ‘This man rolls in dough, wouldn't it be a shame if suddenly all his money went - poof!’
- ‘Collect cells from someone vaccinated against anthrax, take the gene that encodes the resistance and put it into Agrobacterium tumefaciens, infect the plants and… poof!’
- ‘And then - poof! - she was gone, hidden behind a veil of silence.’
- ‘You were freaking out beyond measure and then… poof!’
- ‘Big problem is that if Bugs gets hit by an enemy, poof!’
- ‘As globalisation pulls hundreds of millions of self-reliant farmers off the land, they vanish - poof!’
- ‘Everything she'd been stressed about these past few days had vanished in a single night - poof!’
- ‘Nonetheless, just as I was fantasizing about how I could put my hands on that amount of money while remaining out of jail - poof, it was gone.’
- ‘But they were gone; poof, gone forever, meshed into that heap pile of lost loves.’
- ‘Well, as they always say, it only takes a couple of bad sorts to move in, and, poof, there goes the neighborhood.’
- ‘If the miser tries to hoard the penny or spend it on himself - poof, a handful of ashes.’
2Used to express contemptuous dismissal.
‘“Oh, poof!” said Will. “You say that every year.”’- ‘Oh poof - you're no fun anymore.’
- ‘Oh, poof! You do not understand a little soldierly enthusiasm.’
Origin
Early 19th century symbolic.
Pronunciation
noun
offensive BritishAn effeminate or homosexual man.
gay person, lesbian, gay, lesbigay
Origin
Mid 19th century perhaps an alteration of the archaic noun puff in the sense ‘braggart’.
Pronunciation
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