Definition of "muff" []

• To perform or handle clumsily; bungle. See Synonyms at botch. (verb-transitive)
• Sports To fail to make (a catch). (verb-transitive)
• To perform an act clumsily. (verb-intransitive)
• A clumsy or bungled action. (noun)
• Sports A failure to make a catch. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "George Romney (1781, discussed above), where her small muff is centered below her sheathed bosom and her modestly hidden hands suggest another story."
• "Yes, horrid cold; but my muff is so big, I won't carry it."
• "Of him whose creation is sufficient to render the year 1849 memorable in the annals of the land much has ere now been written -- that type of a well-to-do British householder, delightful for his follies and endearing by his pluck, something of a lunatic, it must be admitted, yet more of a sportsman, and most of all a "muff" -- _Punch's_ "simple-minded Philistine paterfamilias.""