riff
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: Uncertain. Perhaps a clipping of riffle, or an alteration of refrain.
Inflected forms:
form: riffs
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: riffs
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: riffing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: riffed
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: riffed
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A repeated melody line in a song, usually instrumental but sometimes vocal.
pos: noun
examples: Listen to one of the greatest guitar riffs of all time!
Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Child has been named the greatest guitar riff of all time, 41 years after it was recorded, in a poll by website Music Radar.
gloss: A clever or witty remark.
pos: noun
examples: Pope Francis delivers off-the-cuff riff on family life
gloss: A variation on something.
pos: noun
examples: Both the Orbit and the Pinnacle are riffs on an idea sketched out in 1917 by Vladimir Tatlin for a monument to international communism.
Grok’s companions are a riff on the idea of AI assistants or agents, which some people use for friendship or romance in place of or in addition to human partners.
gloss: A spoof.
pos: noun
examples: The creative team has experience with spoofing: Both [Paul] Rudd and [Amy] Poehler had parts in [David] Wain’s Wet Hot American Summer, a hysterically irreverent riff on ’80s summer-camp comedies.
gloss: To improvise in the performance or practice of an art, especially by expanding on or making novel use of traditional themes.
pos: verb
examples: She riffed on the Olympic judges, the bobsled team, then ad-libbed with a woman drinking a martini at the front table.
They were great architects deeply enmeshed in an urban chain of innovation; Wright riffed on Sullivan's idea of form following function, and Sullivan riffed on Jenney, and Jenney relied on the fireproofing innovations of Peter B. Wight.
For Holyoake a strategic advantage of his newly coined label was the way it riffed on the term 'secular' in the Western Christian imaginary.
He riffed an upward arpeggio and in a smooth, slightly neutered baritone began singing “Baby Face.”
In particular, Ralph Breaks The Internet riffs a lot on its enormous parent company, from that princess bit to the Sterling Holloway tone that new good-luck charm Alan Tudyk brings to his vocal performance to a goof on the de facto parenting advice that’s at the heart of so many Pixar movies.
gloss: To riffle.
pos: verb
examples: He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a wellworn deck of cards. He hated Saturday duty. He cut the deck and riffed the two halves together.
He was gracious enough to thank her, and briefly riffed through the pages before putting it in his briefcase.
The man reached inside a pocket of the black broadcloth coat he'd draped over the back of his chair and withdrew a deck of cards, which he fanned in one hand, then bent back and riffed rapidly into the palm of his other.
gloss: To tell jokes over a movie or similar performance.
pos: verb
examples: Most MSTers confine their "riffing" to original fan fiction rather than scripts from corporate-owned entertainment properties, which renders such twice-removed MSTing somewhat toothless: the cannibalizing parody of a pastiche.
A bad sci-fi movie is often ludicrous and silly and ripe for riffing. A bad comedy is usually just dull.
Derived words: riffage
riffwise
riffy
Translations: