Definition of "whiff" []

• A slight, gentle gust of air; a waft: a whiff of cool air. (noun)
• A brief, passing odor carried in the air: a whiff of perfume. (noun)
• A minute trace: "Humanity is unregenerable and hates the language of conformity, since conformity has a whiff of the inhuman about it” ( Anthony Burgess). (noun)
• An inhalation, as of air or smoke: Take a whiff of this pipe. (noun)
• Baseball A strikeout. (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.

• "Actually when the revolution was about to be snuffed out, he got canons into the center of Paris and what he called a whiff of great shot he mowed down the rioters in a vicious by wholly successful attempt to defend the revolution."
• "I'll keep you posted on my experiments with it, in the meantime I'm more than happy to get my thrill by taking a whiff from the jar every now and then."
• "Imperialism itself to the retired elephant hunter who criticises Orwell's inability to put the beast out of its misery - apparently the trick is to aim for the point where the two eye-ear lines cross - these are never less than fascin - ating: a sudden sulphurous whiff from a world in which a writer finds himself turned into a glowing personal presence in the lives of thousands of ordinary people."