Definition of "buff"

[…] ; but is in a ſuite of buffe […]

c. 1594 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Comedie of Errors”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act IV, scene ii], page 94

[…] a Visage rough, / Deform’d, Unfeatur’d, and a Skin of Buff.

1693, John Dryden (translator), The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis Translated into English Verse, London: Jacob Tonson, Satire 10, lines 307-308, p. 203

His face changed from tan to buff.

1929, Dashiell Hammett, chapter 24, in Red Harvest‎

A diuell in an euerlaſting garment hath him ; / On whoſe hard heart is button’d vp with ſteele : / A Feind, a Fairie, pittileſſe and ruffe : / A Wolfe, nay worſe, a fellow all in buffe […]

c. 1594 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Comedie of Errors”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act IV, scene ii], page 94

To be in buff, is equivalent to being naked.

1880, Thomas Wright, “buff”, in Dictionary of obsolete and provincial English, containing words from the English writers previous to the nineteenth century which are no longer in use, or are not used in the same sense. And words which are now used only in the provincial dialects‎, volume 1, London: George Bell and Sons, page 265

Not to mention, nudity can be just plain convenient. “Laundry is minimal,” Schulte notes. It also doesn’t hurt that being in the buff spices up his workday.

2021 October 18, Ian Lecklitzner, “The Inevitable Rise of the Work-From-Home Nudist”, in MEL Magazine‎

Police say this 20 ton hydraulic jack was used to press mixtures of cocaine and “buff” into brick.

2014, “Aldergrove’s 856 gang busted, $400,000 in drugs seized,” CBC News, 30 July, 2014

That's right: I'm taking driver's ed next semester. Hiring an interpreter for CHS and the deaf school outta my own hefty pockets. You're welcome. Oh, and I'm going to get really skinny and buff. All slim like a swimsuit model.

2011, Josh Berk, The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin, Random House Digital, Inc., page 244

"Sure thing, I buffed her, and they turfed her to urology, but she bounced back to me!" [...] They attempted to transfer her to urology by modifying her chart (buffing it) to request urine tests, but the doctors in urology sent (bounced) her back.

1996, Jeffrey E. Nash, James M. Calonico, The Meaning of Social Interaction: An Introduction to Social Psychology‎, page 139

The implication of such an action is an invitation to buff the chart. The medical records department could have prevented the falsification by sending a copy of the chart to the attorney at the same time that they notified the hospital physician of the attorney's request for the chart.

2004, Gregory Davis, Pathology and Law‎, page 121

Bravely run Red-hood, / There was a shock, / To have buff’d out the blood / From ought but a block.

a. 1640, Ben Jonson, The Under-wood‎, page 277

Nathless so sore a buff to him it lent / That made him reel.

1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, stanza 6

A man must consider what a blind-man’s-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect I anticipate your argument.

1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”, in Essays: First Series

[…] diced buff (buffalo) meat, usually heavily spiced […]

2006, Bradley Mayhew, Joe Bindloss, Stan Armington, Nepal

You will eat water buffalo meat and drink boiled water buffalo milk: buff burgers at Aunt Jane's restaurant, buff mo-mos which are the Tibetan won-tons, and buff steaks at The Globe.

1992, Marilyn Stablein, The Census Taker: Stories of a Traveler in India and Nepal, page 62

For they had helmets on their heads, fashioned like wild beast's necks, and strange beavers or buffs to the same, and wore on their helmets great high plumes of feathers, as they had been wings : […]

1899, Selected Lives (orig. by Plutarch), page 317