duffer
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈdʌfɚ/
ipa: /ˈdʌfə/
rhymes: -ʌfə(ɹ)
Forms: form: duffers
Etymology: Cognate with duff, which see (origin is uncertain).
Senses: examples: text: Besides, I was anxious to take the wheel, the man in pink pyjamas showing himself a hopeless duffer at the business.
ref: 1899 March, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number MI, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part II:
glosses: An incompetent, indolent, or clumsy person.
topics: hobbies
lifestyle
sports
glosses: A player having little skill, especially a golfer who duffs.
examples: text: Among them are several distinct and peculiar street-characters, such as the pack-men, who carry their cotton or linen goods in packs on their backs, and are all itinerants. Then there are duffers, who vend pretended smuggled goods, handkerchiefs, silks, tobacco or cigars; also, the sellers of sham sovereigns and sham gold rings for wagers.
ref: 1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, published 1861:
glosses: A pedlar or hawker, especially one selling cheap or substandard goods.
glosses: Cheap or substandard goods sold by a duffer.
synonyms: duff#English:_particles or detritus
glosses: Anything substandard, such as a counterfeit or a defective instance.
examples: text: We have some good cows in this State, but, unfortunately, we have too many duffer cows that are not only being fed and milked at a loss but are eating up a portion of the profit of the good cow which is being milked alongside them.
ref: 1908, Proceedings of the Agricultural Society of Trinidad and Tobago, volume 8, page 116:
text: The truth is that cattlemen love a typical cow for her beauty and symmetry of form; but every herd-testing dairyman knows that an ugly animal may be a good producer, while many a beautiful cow is a duffer.
ref: 1934, Victorian Department of Agriculture, Journal of Agriculture, volume 32, page 293:
synonyms: word: strapper
glosses: A cow that does not produce milk or produces substantially less than her peers do.
examples: text: Judy was an associate (‘stud’) of a Whitefella cattle duffer named Brigalow Bill (aka WJJ Ward).
ref: 2004, Deborah Bird Rose, Reports from a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation, page 112:
ref: 2005 February 2, “Alleged sheep duffer charged”, in The Northern Daily Leader:
text: In the mid-1860s a duffer named James Harnell, who went by the nickname Narran Jim, had taken stock he′d stolen from the district around Culgoa and Narran rivers across Queensland to the Cooper.[…]An alert Bulloo Downs stockman contacted the police, and when Police Inspector Fitzgerald and eight Aboriginal troopers tracked Narran Jim and surrounded him while he was sleeping, the cattle duffer woke to find himself looking down the barrel of Fitzgerald′s revolver and seven years in jail.
ref: 2010, Evan McHugh, The Drovers:
text: The cattle duffer′s escape would have been impeded by those young ones. Calves can be unruly unless you move them carefully in the company of their mothers.
ref: 2011, Clancy Tucker, Gunnedah Hero, unnumbered page:
text: His book-sized Electronic Shepherd prototype is sensitive enough to hear a sheep bleating, a dog barking, a whistle or human command, or even the vehicle or mustering dogs of a potential sheep duffer.
ref: 2015 March 11, Terry Sim, “Greg’s Electronic Shepherd will hear dogs and sheep duffers coming 24/7”, in Sheep Central:
glosses: A cattle thief or thief of other livestock; one who alters the brands of cattle.
glosses: A racing pigeon that does not perform well.
topics: biology
entomology
natural-sciences
glosses: Any of various nymphalid butterflies of the genus Discophora.
Synonyms: sense: incompetent person
word: unskilled person
sense: livestock thief
word: rustler
Derived terms: dufferdom
dufferish
dufferism