huff and puff

1. Make noisy, empty threats; bluster. For example, You can huff and puff about storm warnings all you like, but we'll believe it when we see it. This expression uses two words of 16th-century origin, huff, meaning “to emit puffs of breath in anger,” and puff, meaning “to blow in short gusts,” and figuratively, “to inflate” or “make conceited.” They were combined in the familiar nursery tale, “The Three Little Pigs,” where the wicked wolf warns, “I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down”; rhyme has helped these idioms survive.

Example Sentences

If you were to forget that Hearts - or any other non-Old Firm club - are not supposed to win the league, you can only conclude that McInnes' side are the real deal and that Rodgers' huff and puff champions are in real trouble.

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In other words, it’s not up to Newsom to huff and puff and blow existing House districts down.

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I love being able to stand on the bike and huff and puff up or down the hill.

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In the ad, Berlant suggests that the woman on the mountain needn't huff and puff on that ragged path upwards — an act meant to symbolize eating a plant-based diet to save the planet.

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“The Canadian government placed a very big bet that this was all a bluff from the tech companies and they could not live without Canadian news and they would huff and puff but would ultimately cave,” said Michael Geist, the Canada research chair in internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Related Words

• gasp 
• heave 
• huff 
• smoke 
• suck 
• wheeze