Tuft (pronounced tuhft)
(1) A bunch or cluster of small, usually soft and
flexible parts, as feathers or hairs, attached or fixed closely together at the
base and loose at the upper ends.
(2) A cluster of short, fluffy threads, used to decorate
cloth, as for a bedspread, robe, bath mat, or window curtain.
(3) A cluster of cut threads, used as a decorative finish
attached to the tying or holding threads of mattresses, quilts, upholstery,
etc.
(4) To furnish or decorate with a tuft or tufts; to
arrange in a tuft or tufts.
(5) In the upholstery trade, to draw together (a cushion
or the like) by passing a thread through at regular intervals, the depressions
thus produced being usually ornamented with tufts or buttons. Tufts are not merely decorative because they secure
and strengthen mattresses, quilts, cushions et al; they act to hinder the movement
of the stuffing.
(6) In botany, a small clump of trees or bushes.
(7) A gold tassel on the cap once worn by titled
undergraduates at English universities, one of the more blatant class
identifiers if the UK’s class system; the word tuft was also applied to those entitled
to wear such as tassel and from this use evolved the slang "toff".
1350-1400: From the Middle English toft & tofte (bunch
of soft and flexible things fixed at the base with the upper ends loose), an
alteration of earlier tuffe (which endures
in the Modern English tuff), from the Old French touffe, tuffe, toffe & tofe
(tuft of hair (and source of the modern French touffe)), from the Late Latin tufa
(a crest on a helmet (also found in Late Greek toupha) and probably of Germanic origin (the Old High German was zopf and the Old Norse was toppr (tuft, summit). The earlier European forms were the Old English
þūf (tuft), the Old Norse þúfa (mound), the Swedish tuva (tussock; grassy hillock), from the
Proto-Germanic þūbǭ (tube) & þūbaz.
It was akin to the Latin tūber
(hump, swelling) and the Ancient Greek τῡ́φη (tū́phē) (cattail (used to stuff beds)). The excrescent t (as in against) was an English
addition and tuft was used as a verb from the 1530s. In some contexts, bunch, cluster, collection,
cowlick, group, knot, plumage, ruff, shock, topknot & tussock can impart a
similar meaning but tuft is better for its specific purpose. Tuft is a noun and verb, tufter is a noun and
tufty an adjective. The noun plural is
tufts, the present participle tufting and the past participle tufted.
The 1550s noun tuffet (little tuft) was from the Old
French touffel (the diminutive suffix
-et replacing the French -el) which
was a diminutive of touffe. In English the word is obsolete except for
the use in the nursery rhyme Little Miss
Muffet which seems to have first appeared in print in 1805 although it (and variations) may have been circulating much earlier.
Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
There came a big spider,
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet
away.
Etymologists believe Little
Miss Muffet’s tuffet was a grassy hillock or a small knoll in the ground (a
variant spelling of an obsolete meaning of tuft). The latter-day use to refer to a hassock or footstool
is an example of how (usually obscure) words can acquire meanings if erroneous
definitions are often repeated and come to serve some purpose. Tuffet for example became a favorite of
antique dealers who are apt to call both footstools and low seats “tuffets”, a
handy practice perhaps when provenance is doubtful.
The noun toff began
as mid nineteenth century lower-class London slang for "a stylish dresser,
a man of the smart set. It was an alteration
of tuft, which was a mid-eighteenth century English university (Oxford &
Cambridge) term for students who were members of the aristocracy, a reference
to the gold ornamental tassel (or tufts) worn on the academic caps (mortarboards) of
undergraduates. Throughout
the “long eighteenth century” (a historian’s term which refers for the epoch running
from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to the Congress of Vienna in 1815 (the “long
nineteenth” being 1815-1914 and the “long twentieth” 1914-2001 (ie 9/11))), undergraduates
at both Oxford and Cambridge were differentiated into four classes: (1)
noblemen, (2) gentlemen, (3) commoner-scholars (fellow-commoners at Cambridge)
& (4) servitors (sometimes known at Cambridge as sizars and at Oxford as
battelers). Each of these classes of
undergraduates was entitled to a different form of dress, noblemen since 1490 (further
clarified in 1576) entitled to wear silk and brocaded gowns of bright
colors. Such rich materials emphasized noble status, as did the costly dyes.
The gowns had flap collars, Tudor bag sleeves with gold lace decorations (akin
to the black lace decorations used today on Oxford gimp gowns) and a velvet
round cap with a gold tassel (or tuft) was worn. Noblemen were technically (if misleadingly) nobiles minorum gentium and included the
sons of bishops, knights and baronets and, by resolution of Convocation, could
include heirs of esquires.
The right to wear the golden tuft was briefly restricted
to those with fathers entitled to sit in the House of Lords while those less
blue-blooded were allowed only to a plain black tassel but things gradually
became less exclusive until the practice was abandoned in the late nineteenth
century but the transfer of sense was inevitable: wearers of golden tufts came
to be known as tufts. Those toadies or sycophants (and there were many) who
were slavish followers of the tufts were tufthunters and their antics,
tufthunting, such individuals and their habits quite identifiable to this day. By the 1850s, under the
influence of the cockney accent, the word had been transformed into toff (some
dictionaries of slang noting toft co-existed
in the 1850s but this may have been a mishearing) which endures to refer to
anyone rich and powerful although the original sense was of someone apparently well-bred.
1912 Stutz Bearcat. One of the fastest and most admired American cars of the early era, the Stutz Bearcat assumed such a place in popular culture it was (apocryphally) claimed that should anyone die at the wheel of a Stutz Bearcat, they were granted an obituary in the New York Times.
Tufted leather upholstery was common in early automobiles, the seating often exactly the same as those used in horse-drawn carriages, houses or commercial buildings. The practice faded as production volumes increased and as early as the late 1920s was coming to be restricted to only the most expensive models. This exclusivity tended to prevail until 1972 when Oldsmobile introduced the Regency option for its full-sized Ninety-Eight models, a package, the visual highlight of which was tufted loose-pillow velour upholstery. Suddenly, solidly middle-class Oldsmobile (right in the middle of General Motors’ (GM) Chevrolet-Pontiac-Oldsmobile-Buick-Cadillac hierarchy) had brought both velour and loose-pillow seating to the masses. The velour was at the time much admired and as the tufted upholstery options began to proliferate was usually offered as an alternative to leather. In some climates the velour was probably the better choice and was welcomingly comfortable although in some of the more strident shades of red could recall the popular idea of how a bordello might be furnished. Those who'd never enjoyed a visit to a bordello were presumably more disconcerted than regular customers.
Oldsmobile's move was as audacious and influential as Ford’s introduction in 1965 of the up-market LTD which, like the Regency package had the effect of cannibalizing sales from other divisions within the same corporation. Cadillac, although with a range priced considerably above Oldsmobile, offered nothing with such an ostentatious interior though when it did in 1974 respond with its Talisman package, it made sure it did so with more tufted extravagance still, offering leather as well as velour. The trend the Regency package started would last over twenty years and is remembered especially for the tufted fittings used in Imperials, Chryslers and Dodges, these said to be trimmed in Corinthian leather, an advertising agency creation which meant nothing in particular but sounded vaguely European and therefore expensive. Not all the corporation's leather in the tufted era was described as "Corinthian" and such was the success of one advertising campaign that eventually the claim was restricted to one model range but it all came from one supplier so the label tends to be attached to all.
1977 Chrysler New Yorker Brougham four-door hardtop in Corinthian leather.
Lindsay Lohan in bed with tufted bedhead.
1985 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz in leather.
1989 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham d'Elegance in velour.
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