buffe

American  

[buhf] / bʌf /

Or buff

noun

Armor.

1. plate armor for the lower part of the face and the throat, used with a burgonet.

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Etymology

Origin of buffe

1590–1600; < Middle French < Italian buffa, probably special use of buffa puff of breath, hard breath; buffoon

Example Sentences

She clothed herselfe from the top to the toeIn buffe of the bravest, most seemelye to showe;A faire shirt of male then slipped on shee:Was not this a brave bonny lasse, Mary Ambree?

From A Collection of Ballads by Lang, Andrew

Item, ten or twelue good shirts of male being very good or els none, that may abide the shot of an arrow, and two buffe ierkins.

From The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation — Volume 03 by Hakluyt, Richard

One might style them true German opere buffe.'

From The Serapion Brethren, Vol. I. by Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Wilhelm

Nash’s Haue with you to Saffron-walden, 1596, “Yea, without kerry merry buffe be it spoken,” &c.

From Kemps Nine Daies Wonder Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich by Dyce, Alexander

Beef would seem more like to have come from buffe than from boeuf, unless the two were mere varieties of spelling.

From The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell by Lowell, James Russell