Bluff can mean a high cliff, or it can describe a person who is abrupt in manner, but the most common association is someone pretending to something they're not. If you bluff at cards, you are pretending to have a better hand than you do.
- Pronunciation: / blʌf/
- English description: frighten someone by pretending to be stronger than one really is
- Synonyms: frighten
- Chinese Translation: 虚张声势(xu1 zhang1 sheng1 shi4)
- Spanish Translation: el bluf
- ORIGIN: Many a good crime story ends with a bluff—"I've already contacted the police and they're on their way," the detective will say when that is not at all the case. The expression "calling your bluff" comes from poker, where you "call" a game to see someone's actual cards. Calling someone's bluff means forcing them to admit the truth.
EXAMPLE SENTENCE:
- I may read an opponent, for instance, and bluff them, or trap them, or something.
- He now works out of his home in Rushford, a grand yellow house he restored himself, perched at the foot of a bluff.
*New word description, story and part of "EXAMPLE SENTENCE" are cited in Vocabulary
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