puffer
/ˈpʌfə
/noun
1A person or thing that puffs.Neither of us being puffers we found it quite hard to bear the sweat dripping off our faces from the cooking plates in front of us, coupled with the smoke puffed from every other patron in the joint....
- But surely this is just as difficult as policing bars for errant puffers?
- China will not become stronger if it continues to have one third of the world's puffers.
1.1chiefly Scottish A steamboat, especially a small coastal freighter: that colourful Clyde puffer, the Vital Spark...
- During its heyday, from about 1880 to the Second World War, the Clyde puffer was the lifeline to remote communities along the West Coast.
- The Clyde puffers were the fleets of 66-foot-long floating lorries that once carried general cargoes to the islands.
- This is a typical fisherman's pub, full of brass bits and pieces and old pictures of puffers.
1.2 informal A steam train.Another little known activity of Richard's was monitoring the status and pushing for the restoration of the ‘Little Puffer’ train at the zoo....
- Everyone had pizza and cake, rode the little puffer train, and then checked out some of the animals.
1.3 informal An aerosol inhaler used for administering a drug for a condition such as asthma.What happened was that I was reading in bed, and I was feeling wheezy so I tried to reach for my puffer on my bedside table, but instead I managed to knock my lamp off onto the floor, and it went out (turns out the bulb broke)....
- I am still coughing, which isn't helped by the fact that my puffer broke (and I was so enjoying that being able to breathe thing).
- I didn't say this because I was just incredulous that the doctor would even think of prescribing him a puffer without some more investigating and talk.
2 short for pufferfish.Also called balloonfish, spiny puffers belong to the Tetraodontiformes, an order of fishes known for their strange structures and odd behaviors....
- Further evidence that the several instances of beach spawning in fishes arose by different mechanisms comes from puffers and sticklebacks.
- There is no shortage of choice, a good variety of butterflyfish, an unusual striped damselfish, puffers and a shoal of small barracuda.
