? Obs. exc. dial. [f. tuff, F. touffe (see TUFT sb.) with suffix-exchange dim. -ET for -EL in OF. touffel.]
1. = TUFT sb. 1, 1 b.
1553. Respublica, III. vi. 928. The goddesse occasyon … weareth a greate long tuffet of heare beefore, and behinde hathe not one heare.
1578. Lyte, Dodoens, I. lxxiii. 108. At the toppe of the stalkes groweth blewish floures in thicke tuffets.
a. 1691. Boyle, Hist. Air (1692), 178. Emerging from the ground like tuffets of rushes.
1899. P. Robinson, in Contemp. Rev., June, 844. [A blackcap] standing between two ‘tuffets’ of bloom.
2. A hillock, mound: = TUFT sb. 3 b.
1877. Blackmore, Erema, II. xxxiv. 193. Here were six little grassy tuffets.
3. ? A hassock or footstool.
(Doubtful: perh. due to misunderstanding of the nursery rhyme, which may belong to sense 2.)
18[?]. Nursery Rhyme. Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet, Eating of curds and whey. [Cf. BUFFET1.]
1895. Benson, in Contemp. Rev., July, 125. Miss Moffat … hastily got up from the tuffet—which turned out to be a three-legged stool.
1904. Westm. Gaz., 22 Dec., 1/3. Mamie … gave him a tuffet for his narrow feet.
Hence † Tuffetwise adv. [-WISE], in the manner or form of a tuffet or tuft.
1578. Lyte, Dodoens, II. lvi. 217. The stalke is of a foote and half long: at which groweth a great sort of floures tuffetwise.
