ziff

plural ziffs

1. AustraliaNew ZealanddatedslangA beard.

   The building style can be described as Stalinist Ceremonial at its most relaxed. That is, the external visual impression is as if some comedian had memorialised the moral fixities of Sir Henry Bolte and decorated the result with the late lamented Joe Stalin's ziff.

   1973, Max Harris, The Angry Eye, Sydney, N.S.W.: Pergamon Press, →ISBN, page 116

   1 more example

   As for my trip to the Never Never, well, one lives and learns. I landed safely among a tribe of blacks, and asked an old buck with a white ziff if the 'Marys' of his tribe used paint and powder. He answered with an exceedingly broad nigger grin that 'they use'm charcoal.'

   1934 April 26, The Chronicle, Adelaide, page 59, column 2

   1. AustraliaNew ZealanddatedmetonymicallyslangSomeone with a beard, especially an old man.

      1 more example

      Now he wanted to use electric heat, and electricity was found wanting, and he couldn't understand the difference. Surely if a thing would do all that he had made it do, it should be able to boil water—it was hard to think that "stuff" which some old "ziff" had discovered over a hundred years ago was still better for some jobs than electricity.

      1936 February, “Certain Things for Certain Jobs”, in American Gas Association Monthly, volume XVIII, number 2, New York, N.Y.: American Gas Association, →OCLC, page 61; republished from Australian Gas News, n.d.

plural ziffs

1. UKobsoleteslangA juvenile thief.

   […] Y was a Yoxter that eat caper sauce; / Z was a Ziff who was flashed on the horse.

   1846, George William MacArthur Reynolds, The Mysteries of London, page 60

plural Ziffs

1. A surname from Hebrew.