Definition of "tuft" []

• A short cluster of elongated strands, as of yarn, hair, or grass, attached at the base or growing close together. (noun)
• A dense clump, especially of trees or bushes. (noun)
• To furnish or ornament with tufts or a tuft. (verb-transitive)
• To pass threads through the layers of (a quilt, mattress, or upholstery), securing the thread ends with a knot or button. (verb-transitive)
• To separate or form into tufts. (verb-intransitive)

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.

• "When boys are first shaved generally in the second or third year, a tuft is left on the crown and another over the forehead; but this is not the fashion amongst adults."
• "-- B. togeanensis Sody, 1949: the largest species, it has sparser, shorter body than B. babyrussa and, in contrast to B. celebensis, the tail tuft is well developed."
• "ABOUT five years ago, fome men working in a quarry of that kind of ftone which in this part of the country we call tuft ■ *, at about five or fix feet below the furfiice,, in a very Iblid part of the rock, met with feveral fragments of the horns and bones of one or different animals."