(v. t.) To put off, as dress; to divest one's self of; hence, figuratively, to put or thrust away; to rid one's self of.
(v. t.) To strip; to divest; to undress.
(v. i.) To put off dress; to take off the hat.
Example Sentences:
(1) British consumers, whose bills will be halved, will doff their caps to Tory ministers who made possible this revolution of cheap energy.
(2) Transposing the Brothers Grimm to 1920s Spain, he doffs his montera not only to European silent cinema of the period, but to bullfighting and flamenco, with an atmospheric Gothic melodrama that has lashings of humour – mostly provided by Maribel Verdú as the social-climbing evil stepmother with a penchant for S&M – bags of invention, and an expressive, flamenco-inflected score by Alfonso de Vilallonga.
(3) In movie terms, this is the equivalent of the nerdy librarian who doffs her glasses and shakes out her hair, at which someone must yell, "Why, Miss Jones, you are magnificent!"
(4) Macartney offered to doff his hat, go down on one knee and even kiss the emperor's hand, but declined to kowtow unless a Chinese official agreed to kneel before a portrait of George III.
(5) The available transducers are cosmetically acceptable and are easy to don and doff.
(6) The music nods at Gregorian chant, doffs its cap to Shostakovich , gives a thumbs up to industrial metal, and is uniquely Scott Walker.
(7) Severe restriction of shoulder and trunk mobility made it impossible for these patients to don and doff their prostheses using the traditional figure-of-eight harness.
(8) If so, we must doff our hats to the Britannia of idiocy, and observe that she should really be on coins – the unapologetic face of some apocalypse-baiting modern currency.
(9) Marc Ostwald of Monument Securities 1) One has to always doff one's hat to Draghi for his ability to "blag a blagger", in rather stark (sic) contrast to his predecessors, and the conservative Bundesbank type grouping on the council.
(10) He clearly has a charisma; he laughs a lot and smiles a lot and he has a thing on top of his cap so he can easily doff it."
(11) Having castigated NHS England, we should doff our caps to its new boss, Simon Stevens, for a masterful report that, with a fair wind and a big slice of good fortune, could secure a long-term future for the health service.
(12) While everyone else is falling over to congratulate Jenny Jones, we doff our caps to Antti Koskinen, coach of the Finnish mens snowboard team.
(13) Makeshift centre-forward Gerard Pique shows the Big Game Bottler Other Big Game Bottlers doff their hats to how it's done by picking up a defence-splitting through-ball from Xavi, drawing Julio Cesar towards him, turning on a sixpence and slotting the ball into an empty goal from 12 yards.
(14) But those fears have escalated since a summer row between chief executive Mark Carne and an unsuspecting Patrick McLoughlin, transport secretary, over an additional £1.5bn needed for electrification projects, which has resulted, one source claims, in "armies of civil servants crawling over the budget" even before the track operator officially doffs its cap to McLoughlin.
(15) He's broken more records than an angry DJ and has been a superstar for nearly half his life, and this touching tribute focuses on the respect he's been accorded by colleagues, opponents and fans who doff their caps to him when he walks out to bat.
Toff
Definition:
Example Sentences:
(1) Tory toffs repelling undesirable immigrants, providing better schools, using welfare reform as a pathway to work, clearing vandals, yobs and drunks from the streets and standing up to our masters in Brussels would be very popular, and the word would soon be forgotten.
(2) It’s that the British are so fascinated by toffs that we give them a free pass as long as they stay on brand.
(3) It has got to stop, this fashion for toffs to pose as ordinary.
(4) It has let itself be called a government of unfeeling toffs … The abiding sin of the government is not that some ministers are rich, but that it seems unable to manage its affairs competently."
(5) There is still a sizeable chunk of the world which sees the English as top-hatted toffs who can be cruel to their urchins, so it remains to be seen what they will think after the British Council's celebrations of Charles Dickens' bicentenary.
(6) "You, and George, in particular, have been portrayed as public school toffs.
(7) I will leave the public to judge his actions.” Mick Cash, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, said it should be no surprise that his black cab members across London were considering “a boycott of the Tory toff David Mellor over his outrageous, pompous and disgraceful tirade against one of their colleagues”.
(8) Rex Hunt, fully dressed in his governor's tights and ostrich plumes, was widely seen, not least by toffs in the Foreign Office (FCO), as a slightly Wodehousian figure, the kind more likely to be seen in slacks propping up the golf club bar in a colonial outpost.
(9) A decade earlier, the clever grocer's daughter Margaret Thatcher had devastated Tory toffs with a gale-force combination of vicious class resentment and sexy ankles.
(10) Champagne socialism in action The Mirror's determination to photograph Tory toffs clutching glasses of champagne did not end with the page one Cameron shot which led to the Tory leader renouncing the stuff ("He's had a good talking to," said Samantha C) for the duration of the class war.
(11) Hutchings, a mother-of-four, also declared that she was not a "rich Tory toff" and said she once had to borrow £1.80 to pay for parking from members of a job club she ran because the cash machine would not give her any money.
(12) It affects how voters see Tory choices on tax, welfare and public services – toffs and plebs – in the most damaging way possible.
(13) Fourteen-year-olds pontificating on this must be making the old field marshal turn in his grave, and this debate also perpetuates the myth that British soldiers were "lions led by donkeys", the idea that the brave ordinary Tommy was let down by the brandy-soaked toffs in charge.
(14) As the tagline – "May the best man live" – suggests, it's basically the same old flick with the same old schtick: the Stath tops baddies, boffs toffs (he's a one-man manifesto for geezer supremacy), and cops off with a blondie.
(15) This government has difficulty in managing a non-story about the chancellor upgrading his ticket on a train, or the stupidity of the former chief whip (who is no toff) behaving like a saloon-bar bore.
(16) The first thing you learn about him is what a toff he was: born into a banking family, Fleming's father was Conservative MP and friend of Churchill, Valentine Fleming.
(17) Jonathan was in constant demand whenever a comic toff or a bumbling cleric was called for on TV.
(18) Before Sky, Schuster was head of development at Toff Media, the specialist drama and comedy company founded by Alexander Armstrong and Ben Miller.
(19) Miliband rejected criticisms of Labour's election broadcast, which portrayed the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, as the "Un-credible Shrinking Man" and Conservative cabinet ministers as out-of-touch "toffs".
(20) Your report on Vladimir Putin’s progress from pariah to powerbroker ( Putin has been taken off the menu and returned to the top table , 18 November) reminds me of previous instances where reactionary toffs let their prejudices over Russia cloud their judgment.