Forms: see prec. [f. prec. sb.]
I. 1. trans. To furnish with a tuft or tufts.
1535. in Archæologia, IX. 251. A paire of upper stockis of purple veluette embroidered with golde and tuffed with cameryke.
1573. in Feuillerat, Revels Q. Eliz. (1908), 210. For Tufting vi lardge kirtells of greene Sattin with golde sarcenet.
1630. J. Taylor (Water P.), Trav., Wks. III. 98/1. She’s ring’d, she’s braceleted, she’s richly tuff’d.
1728–46. Thomson, Spring, 914. Solemn oaks, that tuft the swelling mounts.
1743. J. Davidson, Æneid, VIII. 264. Caps tufted with wool.
1833. T. Hook, Parson’s Dau., III. ix. The officers of a crack Hussar regiment … tipped and tufted.
1850. Tennyson, In Mem., cxxviii. 20. To make old bareness picturesque And tuft with grass a feudal tower.
b. Upholstery. To draw together the two surfaces of (a cushion or the like) by a thread passed through at regular intervals producing depressions, which are then usually ornamented with tufts or buttons.
1884. [implied in tufting-button: see TUFTING vbl. sb. 3].
1891. in Cent. Dict.
2. intr. To form a tuft or tufts; to grow in tufts.
1598. Sylvester, Du Bartas, I. i. II. Imposture, 397. Among the dark shade of those tufting arbors.
1629. Parkinson, Paradisus, 317. Tufting close vpon the ground, like vnto the common Thrift.
1794. G. Adams, Nat. & Exp. Philos., III. xxxiv. 408. A sea of cotton, tufting here and there by the action of the air in the undisturbed parts of the clouds.
3. trans. To form into a tuft. rare–1. (Cf. TUFTED 2.)
1860. Hawthorne, Marb. Faun, viii. What weeds cluster and tuft themselves on the cornices of ruins.
II. 4. trans. To beat (a covert) in stag-hunting. Also absol.
1590. Cokaine, Treat. Hunting, C iv b. You may begin to tuft for a Bucke.
1612. Drayton, Poly-olb., xiii. 113. When with his hounds The laboring Hunter tufts the thicke vnbarbed grounds Where harbor’d is the Hart.
1870. Blaine, Encycl. Rur. Sports (ed. 3), § 1813. Tufting of deer. As deer frequently herd in copses, woods, and brakes, it is usual to tuft (hunt) a covert with a couple or two of steady old hounds, called tufters.
1908. Q. Rev., July, 90. The lonely ridges of the Brendon hills are ‘tufted’ for a ‘warrantable’ deer.
b. To dislodge (the game) by ‘tufting’; also fig.
a. 1640. Jackson, Creed, X. xxiv. § 4. The … meaning of the learned moderator hath been by his followers … so meanly tufted, and so unskilfully hunted after.
1909. ‘Q’ (Quilier-Couch), True Tilda, xxi. 298. They had tufted him [a stag] out of the wood.
