tuft

plural tufts

1. A bunch of feathers, grass or hair, etc., held together at the base.
2. A cluster of threads drawn tightly through upholstery, a mattress or a quilt, etc., to secure and strengthen the padding.
3. A small clump of trees or bushes.

   “Not far from this place, there is a tuft of about a dozen of tall beeches […].”

   1755, Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Tobias Smollett, Don Quixote, Volume One, II.4

4. historicalA gold tassel on the cap worn by titled undergraduates at English universities.
5. historicalA person entitled to wear such a tassel.

   Several young tufts, and others of the faster men.

   1859–1861, [Thomas Hughes], Tom Brown at Oxford: […], (please specify |part=1 or 2), Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, published 1861, →OCLC

   1 more example

   A college tutor, or a nobleman’s toady, who appears one fine day as my right reverend lord, in a silk apron and a shovel-hat, and assumes benedictory airs over me, is still the same man we remember at Oxbridge, when he was truckling to the tufts, and bullying the poor undergraduates in the lecture-room.

   1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 62, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC

present singular third person tufts · participle present tufting · participle past tufted · past tufted

1. transitiveTo provide or decorate with a tuft or tufts.

   His tufted cottage rising through the snow

   a. 1749 (date written), James Thomson, “Winter”, in The Seasons, London: […] A[ndrew] Millar, and sold by Thomas Cadell, […], published 1768, →OCLC

   1 more example

   The scarred and fissured fronts of the huge cliffs themselves are tufted with dwarf oaks and shrubs, wherever these can find a footing, their verdure contrasting vividly with the bare white face of the limestone rock.

   1918, James George Frazer, Folk-Lore In The Old Testament, volume 1, page 173

2. transitiveTo form into tufts.
3. transitiveTo secure and strengthen (a mattress, quilt, etc.) with tufts. This hinders the stuffing from moving.

   They're never gonna get that Ottoman tufted in time!

   2017 December 2, “The Impossible Summit of Mt. Neverrest!” (0:13 from the start), in DuckTales, season 1, episode 3

4. intransitiveTo be formed into tufts.

plural Tufts

1. A surname.