tiff
Americannoun
-
a slight or petty quarrel.
- Synonyms:
- difference, misunderstanding, scrap, spat
-
a slight fit of annoyance, bad mood, or the like.
verb (used without object)
-
tiffs,
present (3rd person singular)
-
tiffed,
past participle, past
-
tiffing
present participle
-
to have a petty quarrel.
-
to be in a tiff.
noun
-
a petty quarrel
-
a fit of ill humour
verb
noun
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
tiffsimple
-
tiffssimple
-
have tiffedperfect
-
has tiffedperfect
-
am tiffingprogressive
-
are tiffingprogressive
-
is tiffingprogressive
-
have been tiffingperfect progressive
-
has been tiffingperfect progressive
Past
-
tiffedsimple
-
had tiffedperfect
-
was tiffingprogressive
-
were tiffingprogressive
-
had been tiffingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of tiff
First recorded in 1720–30; origin uncertain
Explanation
A tiff is a minor, relatively unimportant argument or fight. A tiff with your brother might start over the subject of whose turn it is to take out the trash. It's no fun to have a tiff with someone, but it's usually resolved or forgotten easily. When you have a tiff with a friend, it's inevitably a squabble over some silly topic, and if you bicker with your boyfriend, you can call it a "lovers' tiff." In the 1700s, a tiff was an "outburst of temper," from an unknown source. Some word experts suggest the word echoes the sound of a "puff of air or gas."
Vocabulary lists containing tiff
The Catcher in the Rye
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Never Let Me Go
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Peter Pan
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The tiff between the two rap stars was one of the most talked about hip-hop events in recent memory, chock-full of the salacious, “he said what?!” drama of reality TV.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 13, 2026
And for good measure, there's already been a very public tiff with the industry, after ministers started talking about price gouging and profiteering.
From BBC ● Mar. 14, 2026
The women get into a small tiff, reminiscent of moments in “Sex and the City” when Carrie felt more understood by her best friend than she wanted to admit.
From Salon ● Jul. 15, 2025
Back in 2019, Trump’s call caused a brief diplomatic tiff with Denmark, under whose sovereignty the vast island falls.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 23, 2024
One girl in chiffon had a tiff with her date and ran off toward the first tee, calling, “Wait for me!”
From "Stargirl" by Jerry Spinelli
She said this attitude can elevate minor tiffs on social media into real life fights on campus.
From Washington Times ● Aug. 29, 2023
The regular tiffs between Mr. Sunak’s predecessor, Boris Johnson, and European leaders like President Emmanuel Macron of France played better in England than they did in Scotland or Northern Ireland.
From New York Times ● Feb. 17, 2023
“I know he gets in tiffs with people or don’t like him from the other side. He’s just competing and he loves competing.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 18, 2022
Teigen is actively trying to avoid these exact kinds of social media tiffs anyway after being the subject of controversy this summer amid allegations of cyberbullying.
From Fox News ● Sep. 30, 2021
We never laid a hand on each other again, and even though we’d get into plenty of verbal clashes, our tiffs tended to end the way our fistfight had, with us cracking up.
From "If I Stay" by Gayle Forman
When the lovers tiffed, the corpses looked "woebegone and reproachful."
From Time Magazine Archive
Recently he has tiffed with his superior, Secretary Harold Ickes.
From Time Magazine Archive
Last week the two tiffed on the bench.
From Time Magazine Archive
Miss Maitland only stared at this obscure announcement: so Fanny had to explain that Zoe and she had tiffed, and made it up, and Zoe had given her a brooch.
From A Woman-Hater by Charles Reade
We tiffed a little going to church, and fairly quarrelled before the bells had done ringing.
From The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 by Ontario. Ministry of Education
"Clint likes a director he gets along with, which makes a lot of sense to me--especially now," recalled Reynolds, his remark referring to his recent tiffing with director Dick Richards.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 6, 2018
The post was wildly inaccurate, but it did portend a contentious subplot to USC’s opening game against Alabama: the schools and their marching bands are tiffing over “Tusk,” the top-10 Fleetwood Mac hit.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 26, 2016
They are still flirting and tiffing in character.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 13, 2013
The near unmaking of The Marrying Man and the on-set tiffing between its lead actors, Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, made a much read and sermonized-over feature in Premiere magazine.
From Time Magazine Archive
At one part of their journey they took their "tiffing," and after this they had to jump across a ditch, which the young officers cleared, but the major "jumped short."
From Second Edition of A Discovery Concerning Ghosts With a Rap at the "Spirit-Rappers" by George Cruikshank
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
