(n.) The forward or weather leech of a sail, especially of the jib, spanker, and other fore-and-aft sails.
(v. i.) To turn the head of a vessel toward the wind; to sail nearer the wind; to turn the tiller so as to make the vessel sail nearer the wind.
Example Sentences:
(1) "There is a real risk that Google, entirely unintentionally, could limit innovation simply because of its dominance," according to Peter Luff, the Conservative chairman of the Business and Enterprise Committee.
(2) Last March Peter Luff , the minister for defence equipment – the position itself is telling – said in a speech in London: "The individual UK armed forces are in themselves a brand … If they are using a particular piece of kit, then that's the kind of endorsement a lot of companies are very keen indeed to have."
(3) "We have 25 independent analysts following the company, and if you look at their forecasts for 2015, there isn't a single one who is forecasting that profit margins will double or anything like that," said Centrica's financial director, Nick Luff.
(4) Politicians from across the parties are also recognised for long service in Westminster, including Kevin Barron, Labour chairman of the standards committee, Peter Luff, a former Tory defence minister, and Richard Ottaway, Conservative chairman of the foreign affairs committee, who are all knighted.
(5) In the months before he switched designation of his second home from Worcester to London, Luff paid for more than £5,000 decorating and repairs.
(6) Sir Peter Luff, the Tory MP for Mid-Worcestershire who is retiring next year, said the main parties needed to communicate better.
(7) Laidlaw wants to bail out as chief executive, and his finance boss, Nick Luff, has already announced his own plans to leave.
(8) On the basis of results from their own investigations, the authors compare the values yielded by the enzymatic method with those obtained by means of the Luff-Schoorl procedure.
(9) Over the past year the company has lost the finance director Nick Luff, British Gas boss Phil Bentley and chairman Sir Roger Carr.
(10) The departure of Chris Weston after just over a year in the job follows the resignation of the finance director, Nick Luff, who is set to be followed by the chief executive, Sam Laidlaw, though his exit has not been confirmed officially.
(11) Yesterday Peter Luff, chairman of the cross-party business and enterprise committee of MPs, told the BBC's Today programme that if the deal had gone ahead it would have meant "a huge concentration of electricity generation in the hands of one supplier, over a quarter of the market in one supplier".
(12) Peter Luff, the Conservative MP for Worcestershire Mid, has insisted Ipsa's rules forced him to move out of his home and rent.
(13) Luff noted that Centrica had put three gas-fired power stations up for sale two months ago and scrapped plans for an offshore windfarm, the Celtic Array off Anglesey.
(14) Nick Luff, Centrica's finance director, said the improvement in the bottom line had been driven by demand returning to "normal levels" among the group's 15.8 million British Gas customers.
(15) Examination of the register of members' interests shows that those who are renting a London home whilst claiming rental income include Liam Fox, the former defence secretary and the former ministers Peter Luff and Nick Harvey.
(16) 1.34pm GMT Peter Luff , the Conservative former defence minister, asks what the purpose of the three new boats will be.
(17) Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, David Gauke, a Treasury minister, and Peter Luff, a junior defence minister, have all already visited Scotland this autumn.
(18) The source said the headhunters looking for Luff's replacement had been asked to look for a new man for the top job at the same time.
(19) Luff and Weston earned £1.2m apiece last year – down from over £3m, which prompted a Financial Times headline warning: "Slimmer pay packets may deter replacements."
(20) Luff said while the rebuff for EDF had few short-term implications: "The government does have to get on with creating the climate in which these new nuclear power stations are built."
Muff
Definition:
(n.) A soft cover of cylindrical form, usually of fur, worn by women to shield the hands from cold.
(n.) A short hollow cylinder surrounding an object, as a pipe.
(n.) A blown cylinder of glass which is afterward flattened out to make a sheet.
(n.) A stupid fellow; a poor-spirited person.
(n.) A failure to hold a ball when once in the hands.
(n.) The whitethroat.
(v. t.) To handle awkwardly; to fumble; to fail to hold, as a ball, in catching it.
Example Sentences:
(1) At the end of each session, he is forced to don a pair of blackened goggles, ear muffs are placed over his head, and he is ordered to place the palms of his hands together so that a guard can grasp his thumbs to lead him away.
(2) Less conventional still is Muff Cafe, a custom-motorbike-workshop-cum-really-rather-good-organic-restaurant in Hackney Wick that a friend recommends on condition that "you don't fill it with Guardian readers".
(3) The novelist and critic Tom Bissell has described the protagonist's Jewish lawyer in 2002's Vice City as "an anti-Semitic parody of an anti-Semitic parody", while in the new game one of the main character's daughters has a tattoo that reads "skank", and one mission involves you helping a paparazzo capture a starlet's "low-hanging muff".
(4) Jay Prosch almost muffs a punt and then Auburn goes 3 and out, including an inexplicable wildcat play on 2nd down.
(5) the throat plate could be surrounded with muff a 4-5 mm in height which would provide a greater soldering area and thus increase the strength of the connection.
(6) Chris Davis almost muffs the punt return for Auburn, that's not as dirty as it sounds.
(7) The muffs and most earplugs produced similar attenuation levels at high frequencies, although the muffs produced less attenuation at low frequencies.
(8) Ten different common muff-type ear defenders were tested by 50 potential users for comfort and ease of use.
(9) Everyone believed they knew the script to come but Germany muff ed their lines.
(10) The author suggests a tube formed from the omentum and enveloping a drainage rubber tube like a muff.
(11) During its early stages of development the fungus is always surrounded by a thick bacterial muff.
(12) End-to-side microvascular anastomosis is performed by applying four crossed-fixing sutures and by mantling a hemostatic sponge muff (eg, Spongostan) impregnated with fibrinogen-thrombin glue.
(13) The subject-fit condition resulted in significantly lower protection levels, from 4 to 14 dB, at 1000 Hz and below for a premolded polymer earplug, a user-molded foam earplug, and a double protector consisting of a muff over the foam plug.
(14) After original bassist Kim Deal left the group six days into the recording of the new material, the band hired Kim Shattuck of the Muffs to replace her temporarily .
(15) Plastic ear plugs were preferred by 44%, vinyl foam ear plugs by 26%, fibreglass down by 18%, and ear muffs by 11% of the workers.
(16) By means of morphometrical grid amount of cells in the periarterial lymphoid muffs (PLM) and in marginal zones (MZ) of the spleen have been counted.
(17) A total of 10 cases are presented, of patients with tarso-metatarsal luetic osteoarthropathy, characterized by a mosaic of destructive lesions (osteoporosis, osteonecrosis, osteolysis, bone goma, spontaneous amputations of bone segments), coexisting with bone-constructive lesions (osteophitosis, compact layer condensation, osteosclerosis, peridiaphisal-epiphiseal muff), with periostal and articular reactions.
(18) So they carried on, with friends filling in: Kim Shattuck of LA pop-punk band the Muffs is currently playing bass.
(19) Movement activity caused up to a 6-dB significant reduction in frequency-specific attenuation over time for the premolded plug, muff, and muff-plug combination.
(20) 4.03am GMT Florida State 13-21 Auburn, 3:40, 3rd quarter And Auburn almost muffs the punt return again!