(superl.) Of a rough or stern manner, voice, or countenance; sour; surly; severe; harsh.
Example Sentences:
(1) A gruff intellectual alternately nicknamed “Mad Dog” and “the warrior monk,” Mattis is deeply respected in much of the foreign policy establishment, despite notably clashing with the Obama administration over his more hawkish views on Iran.
(2) Ricky Gervais: 'It’s always about people, it’s always about ego' Read more Take the film’s opening minute, in which gruff US comedian Jim Norton cameos as an absurdly camp male prostitute eager to offer radio journalist Frank Bonneville (Eric Bana) a “freebie”.
(3) I still am.” For many Republican primary voters, the question is whether the unassuming if somewhat gruff Paul – who insisted on no mayo in the ham and cheese sandwich he ordered for lunch – ever was particularly interesting, or if voters were only attracted to the idiosyncratic, 21st-century libertarianism he expounds.
(4) At the booth in between the never-was of Windsor and the has-been of Detroit, the officer I happened to draw had a gruff belly and the mysterious air of intentional inscrutability, like a troll under a bridge in a fairytale.
(5) The then manager was Walter Smith, a gruff but dignified Scot who had enjoyed considerable success at Rangers a decade earlier.
(6) Ingham, whose gruffness camouflages an intellect of silken agility, was addressing the specific question of his boss’s public image, and asking, by implication, if the Iron Lady could – well – melt, just a little.
(7) The film critic, who says Statham's name with an approximation of his low, gruff cockney, likes the chance the actor took with Hummingbird and also admires his 2011 film Blitz , co-starring Paddy Considine.
(8) Many had come for the first time to witness the much-vaunted oratorical skills of France’s youngest MP – and to see how she compared to her grandfather, the gruff former paratrooper Jean-Marie Le Pen, who co-founded the Front National in 1972 and led it to become the most successful far-right party in western Europe.
(9) Get the metal pan!” Martin jokes, aping the Hollywood convention of a gruff doctor dropping each slug into a brass surgical tray with a solid “plink”.
(10) Rajapaksa's folksy, gruff bonhomie and his canny direction of development funds to the countryside has paid dividends at successive polls.
(11) His manner was often gruff and rude, even to those he liked: Isabella Blow, (pictured right with McQueen) who was broke when she bought his entire first collection and had to pay for it in installments, told me once how he used to march her to the cashpoint every week to get £50 out.
(12) Many of them were adapted for television or made into feature films; the Wexford books in particular were an enormous success on TV, with the actor George Baker playing Wexford as a big, gruff, rural policeman, solving crime in the fictional Sussex town of Kingsmarkham.
(13) But his less enthusiastic answer about Bannon comes amid reports of infighting in the Trump White House, all of which place the gruff, irascible Bannon at the center.
(14) Jenkins is small, but she has a surprisingly gruff voice, rising to a growl when she is annoyed.
(15) "I'm extremely well," he says with jovial gruffness.
(16) Luther starts in the UK on Tuesday, 9pm, BBC1 LUTHER: THE SERIES THREE LINEUP John Luther Gruff of voice, red of eye, natty of coat, the maverick DCI is good at solving crime, bad at life.
(17) His voice sounded gruff, his eyes still fixed on my breasts as he continued the fierce stroking and caressing.
(18) The White House did not announce the meeting until late on Thursday, prompting a gruff complaint from Beijing, in what has become something of a diplomatic ritual whenever Obama meets the exiled Buddhist monk.
(19) Tens of thousands of west of Scotland men derived a gruff pride in working hard for their money and providing food and shelter for their families.
(20) The show has made a star of one year 9 boy, 13-year-old Ryan Ward, a gruff-voiced, latte-drinking philosopher who wants to be a firefighter, a police officer or an actor.
Guff
Definition:
Example Sentences:
(1) Instead, we internalise all the guff telling us that poverty is the inevitable result of an individual’s moral decrepitude.
(2) Fiona, by email Well, Fiona, I could, I guess, regale you with the usual guff about pointy-toed flats and midi-length skirts, and all that would be true, to a certain point.
(3) If we cannot talk about redistribution, what is the point of this guff on social mobility?
(4) Forget all that ministerial guff about the necessity of cutting the public sector to spur economic growth.
(5) Frustratingly for Hilton's critics, who like to paint him as a sort of misguided guff engine, the big society has been a resounding, concrete success.
(6) At least it trumps its predecessor thanks to the inclusion of the word ‘girt’, which undercuts all the guff about “golden soil” and being “young and free” by virtue of sounding like an Irishman saying ‘girth’.
(7) Forget the guff about the need for further environmental investigation (which in any case has already been done) and about which this carelessly non-green government does not give a fig.
(8) Nobody, not even Geoff Boycott, cares about such inane guff.
(9) In fact, I don't think there's a single product in the entire cosmetics industry that prompts as much guff from advertisers, PRs and shop assistants as moisturisers, and that really is saying something.
(10) But the point needs making: the idea that they are run by sports-phobic softies is up there with all the guff talked about immigration, health and safety and the rest.
(11) Cody offers a standing rebuke to all the guff being spouted about a dearth of right-wing comedy.
(12) Angling, wildlife and heritage groups on Thursday attacked new proposals for a £34bn tidal barrage across the Severn estuary, with one telling MPs that environmental benefits touted by proponents of the barrage are "spin" and "guff".
(13) He needs us to believe that commercial management techniques - performance-related pay, new employment contracts and efficiency targets - are what's needed, rather than sentimental guff about public spirit.
(14) The resulting disembodiment of their mouth-guff will have an air of the supernatural or even divine.
(15) You know it's ruinous guff and adds nothing to the human experience, but you can't miss an episode.
(16) Or as if diversity of leadership and ownership did not really matter, as long as the data-driven, responsively designed new news becomes a radical and successful enough departure from the drab anecdote laden guff put out by those other men.
(17) Statements from the insurance industry are vague and nebulous – plenty of reassuring guff about encouraging market conditions, rather than new insurance products we can actually buy.
(18) Is it, for all Nick Clegg's guff about "progressive cuts", that the real agenda is to complete the demolition job on welfare states that was started in the 1980s?
(19) Tech City and Year of Code may be lovely and shiny, but we need to move beyond the PR guff.
(20) <Insert guff about how it might be the stroke of luck he needs to compile a matchwinning 62,867 not out here>.