What's the difference between huff and scoff?

Huff


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To swell; to enlarge; to puff up; as, huffed up with air.
  • (v. t.) To treat with insolence and arrogance; to chide or rebuke with insolence; to hector; to bully.
  • (v. t.) To remove from the board (the piece which could have captured an opposing piece). See Huff, v. i., 3.
  • (v. i.) To enlarge; to swell up; as, bread huffs.
  • (v. i.) To bluster or swell with anger, pride, or arrogance; to storm; to take offense.
  • (v. i.) To remove from the board a man which could have captured a piece but has not done so; -- so called because it was the habit to blow upon the piece.
  • (n.) A swell of sudden anger or arrogance; a fit of disappointment and petulance or anger; a rage.
  • (n.) A boaster; one swelled with a false opinion of his own value or importance.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Only gametocytes of the last species were found; they are similar to those of Plasmodium lemuris Huff and Hoogstraal, 1963.
  • (2) We’re meant to get into a choreographed huff about train fares.
  • (3) The home side lost Raheem Sterling, who injured a groin in a challenge with Juan Mata, and even when they pinned back their opponents for periods of the second half it was a lot of huff and puff without too much guile.
  • (4) "Huff was maybe sweeter and more melodic," Gamble agrees, warming to my notion that he was maybe the Lennon to Huff's McCartney.
  • (5) Gamble and Huff's career spans the history of rock and soul – Gamble sang with a group called the Romeos in the 60s, while Huff's early days reach back further, having played piano on sessions for the rock'n'roll songwriting duo Leiber and Stoller, and for Phil Spector.
  • (6) These were forerunners of today's "conscious hip-hop" (not for nothing is Gamble and Huff's catalogue among the most ransacked by rappers for samples).
  • (7) Lara Flynn Boyle The break-out star of the show, who played Donna Hayward, enjoyed a patchy career in film (Wayne's World, Men in Black II), later returning to TV to appear in long-running legal drama The Practice, as well as Las Vegas and Huff.
  • (8) Hughes had sent on Mame Diouf for Shaqiri, a move that had the Swiss punching a seat and plonking himself down in a major huff.
  • (9) "Dressing for pleasure" and "fun fashion" get a bad rap, especially for women in their middle age, as it is generally assumed that this is a euphemism for women dressing like clowns and not realising that, at their age (huff, huff), they should be wearing beige cashmere.
  • (10) Anyway, shadow ministers huff, what’s so wrong with minority government?
  • (11) "There was no blood on the carpet, nobody went off in a huff and we all ended up firm friends and happy with the result," she said.
  • (12) The Westminster parliament can huff and puff, but – as visits to China by the prime minister, the chancellor and the mayor of London all show – we need them more than they need us.
  • (13) Furthermore, there are only two published case histories of dystocia in the snake (Huff 1976, Hime 1976) and thus this case was considered to be of particular interest.
  • (14) "Everything has its ups and downs," Huff says, echoing Craig Werner's assessment of Philly as "the party [with a] tormented soul".
  • (15) In walks a rather dishevelled looking Lil Wayne, who seems to be in a huff about an autograph hunter who was waiting in the lobby.
  • (16) There are lots of angry faces and disgruntled huffs from commuters.
  • (17) I get the feeling that in the last week or so, doctors generally are beginning to realise that I and Jeremy Hunt may be right, however noisily their leaders may huff and puff.
  • (18) Don’t take all the huff and puff of the new comer in the US seriously,” Khamenei said, according to the transcript of his speech on his official website.
  • (19) In the pros, Nevin would have been on top, perhaps, but amateur scoring is so different (a point lost on NBC's Teddy Atlas before the US network went home in a huff), more speed-chess with gloves, and Campbell kept his lead, 9-8 after two rounds, with long, raking southpaw lefts as the Irishman planted his feet to score with heavier shots.
  • (20) He obviously has a talent for writing that I can't help thinking could be better channelled elsewhere than celebrity angsting on the Huff Post.

Scoff


Definition:

  • (n.) Derision; ridicule; mockery; derisive or mocking expression of scorn, contempt, or reproach.
  • (n.) An object of scorn, mockery, or derision.
  • (n.) To show insolent ridicule or mockery; to manifest contempt by derisive acts or language; -- often with at.
  • (v. t.) To treat or address with derision; to assail scornfully; to mock at.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Lunchtime read: How banter conquered Britain Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: Guardian Design Team There are hundreds of banter groups on Facebook, you can eat at restaurants called Scoff & Banter or buy an “Archbishop of Banterbury” T-shirt for £9.99.
  • (2) Mere hypothecation, scoff politicians, rejecting the idea again in parliament yesterday.
  • (3) And does Ofsted really expect to get away with using the “kids today!” scoff as an actual, presentable-to-parliament reason for these embarrassingly high youth unemployment rates?
  • (4) Russia continues to scoff at evidence that Syrian government forces carried out the chemical weapons attack on Khan Sheikhun earlier this week.
  • (5) Brooks worries that part of the problem with society is that we have become conditioned to scoff the marshmallow.
  • (6) Penny Wong scoffs at 'entertaining but erratic' Barnaby Joyce leading National party Read more The governor of the Reserve Bank Glenn Stevens said at the time there were “few things less likely than Australia defaulting on its sovereign debt”.
  • (7) Rolf scoffs at those who say the Fight for 15, which the SEIU has underwritten, has failed at its goals of unionizing McDonald’s and getting it to adopt a $15 minimum.
  • (8) Clegg will insist that the Lib Dems have already replaced Labour as the country's leading "progressive" party and scoff at Tory pretensions to the same label.
  • (9) Heavily bandaged and unable to walk, she scoffs at the US ambassador's talk of a thorough investigation of the Ahuas raid.
  • (10) Rodgers scoffs at papers from US military colleges branding them a strategic threat and a Honduran government claim linking maras to al-Qaida.
  • (11) Although, of course, the easiest thing would simply to be British about all this and scoff.
  • (12) The Castrol Index, for the mercifully uninitiated, is of course the nonsense ranking scheme cooked up by some bods at Fifa's Castle Greyskull to give people even more of a reason to scoff at them, which is always grand.
  • (13) "You can't scoff at sewing and it's practicality," asserts Dave Montez.
  • (14) Sceptics may scoff, and results of an attempt to extract DNA and match it to descendants are not due until Christmas, but Thompson is adamant that the bones now resting in a safe in the archaeology and ancient history department of Leicester University are those of the last Plantagenet, Richard III , who rode out of Leicester on the morning of 22 August 1485 a king, and came back a naked corpse slung over the pommel of a horse.
  • (15) Presented with official estimates of how many immigrants are in the country illegally, a common response is to scoff.
  • (16) Morrissey scoffs at Vanessa Redgrave's celebrity humanitarianism in his autobiography.
  • (17) I used to scoff at the simplicity of equating onscreen violence with its real-world equivalent.
  • (18) Liberals may scoff, pundits may shake their heads, but Palin herself clearly still wants some form of political life.
  • (19) His opposite number scoffs at the forecasts and promises his tweaks would be far superior.
  • (20) Some might call such a day 'The Millennium', but America shies away from the socialist solution, while the rest of the world scoffs but votes with its wallets to adopt our culture.