pffft.

  n.  a spray from a paint can.

<A heavy coating takes care of a bald spot; a light pffft! and that tinge of silver you’ve developed is history.  —Becker & Mayer Ltd., You’re Not Getting Better, You’re Getting Older.>

adj.  broken up, i.e., no longer a couple.

<The doctor and I are pffft anyway.  —Peter David, Fire on High.>

n.  a “coarse” expression indicating that one has been insulted, as in the novel Heaven on Earth by Marilyn Pappano.


n.  a spurt of breath, as to blow something away from one’s face in the comic strip “PvP” by Scott R. Kurtz; see phhbbppt.


n.  the pop of a bubble bursting.

<Ambassador Rahel’s giggle escaped in a bluegreen bubble (the color of a jackfruit fly) and burst in the hot airport air.  Pffft! was the sound it made.  —Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things.>

n.  the sound of a balloon deflating.

<The volunteer was given a pair of safety glasses and a long bamboo pole to the end of which was secured a match.  This was lit, and placed under the balloon.  It collapsed with a dull pffft.  —D.W. St. John, A Terrible Beauty.> <[W]hen I told him that I had not only my loving mother to testify to my injuries, but a very nice bartender as well, he just went pffft like a balloon on a dartboard.  —Janet LaPierre, Keepers: A Port Silva Mystery.>

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