pffff.

n.  etcetera.

<Today I’m with Dave in L.A., tomorrow in Detroit with Miles, then Phoenix, Chicago—pffff!  —Jack Chambers, Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis.>

n.  the barely-perceptible sound of porpoises breathing.

<Pffff.  Pause.  Pffff.  I’d heard this sound my first night at Nuka Island and thought—hoped—it might be a sea mammal.  ...  Tonight, on an evening paddle across glassy, tranquil Berger Bay, I hear it again: Pffff ... pffff.  I paddle slowly toward the sound and spot what looks like a wake.  Then, a hundred yards away, maybe less, I see a curved back and dorsal fin gently break the water and disappear.  I count two, three animals.  Not large.  Not whales.  They’re harbor porpoises, also known as common porpoises.  ...  Occasionally they snort and splash, in preparation for deeper dives.  But mostly they cut the water with no perceptible sound, except their breaking.  Pffff ... pffff ... pffff.  —Bill Sherwonit, Alaska’s Accessible Wilderness: A Traveler’s Guide to Alaska’s State Parks.>

n.  the hiss of a dart shooting from a blowgun, as described in The Rivers Ran East by Leonard Clark.


n.  the sound of an explosion.

<“[The Inspector] figures there was some kind of flukey explosion, you know”—he used his hands—“pffff, with flames hitting the ceiling rafters.”  —Barbara Delinsky, Three Wishes.>

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