subs. (university).—1. A young nobleman: students of rank formerly wore a gold tuft or tassel in their cap: obsolete. Whence TUFT-HUNTER = a hanger on to a man of title, a sycophant, toady, lick-spittle; TUFT-HUNTING = SPONGING (q.v.) on men of title or means. See GOLD-HATBAND> (GROSE).
1840. THACKERAY, A Shabby Genteel Story, ii. The lad … followed with a kind of proud obsequiousness all the TUFTS of the University. Ibid. (1842), The Book of Snobs, v. At Eton … Lord Buckram was birched with perfect impartiality. Even there, however, a select band of sucking TUFT-HUNTERS followed him. Ibid., xiv. In the midst of a circle of young TUFTS.
1851. CARLYLE, Life of Sterling, II. iii. He was at no time the least of a TUFT-HUNTER, but rather had a marked natural indifference to TUFTS.
1852. BRISTED, Five Years in an English University, 176. The gold-TUFTED Cap, which at Cambridge only designates a Johnian or Small-College Fellow-Commoner is here [Oxford] the mark of nobility.
1853. REV. E. BRADLEY (‘Cuthbert Bede’), The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman, I. vii., note. As TUFT and TUFT-HUNTERS have become household words, it is perhaps needless to tell anyone that the gold tassel is the distinguishing mark of a nobleman.
1902. Free Lance, 22 Nov., 169. 1. A writer in the Sovereign, adopting the happy pseudonym of ‘Thomas TUFT-HUNT,’ has commenced a series entitled ‘Sovereigns I have Seen.’
2. (old colloquial).—An imperial, a goat’s beard.
1842–3. THACKERAY, Fitz-Boodle’s Confessions. Do you like those TUFTS that gentlemen sometimes wear upon their chins?
3. (venery).—The pubic hair: male or female: also (of women) TUFTED HONOURS and CLOVEN TUFT (TUFTED HONOURS also = the female pudendum).
1653. URQUHART, Rabelais, xv., note. Why Callibistri should signify a woman’s TUFTED HONOURS I know not.
d. 1704. T. BROWN, Works, ii. 186. Get a good warm Girdle and tie round you…. Pox on you, how can a single girdle do me good when a Brace was my destruction?… a sacrifice to a CLOVEN TUFT.
