buff [M16th] The word buff originally meant ‘a buffalo or other type of wild ox’, and buff leather, often shortened to simply buff, was leather made from the hide of such an animal. This leather was very strong, with a pale yellowish-beige colour. It was used to make military uniforms, and so soldiers would be described as ‘wearing buff’ or ‘in buff’. The combination of these descriptions and the similarity of the leather’s colour to that of a white person’s skin led to in the buff, ‘naked’. The buff meaning ‘the bare skin’ dates from the mid 17th century. The slang sense ‘good-looking, fit, and attractive’, which appeared in California at the beginning of the 1980s, comes from the idea of ‘buffing’ or polishing something, originally with a cloth of buffalo leather. Another buff uniform gave rise to the buff who is enthusiastic and knowledgeable about a particular subject. The original buffs were, in the words of The New York Sun in 1903, ‘men and boys whose love of fires, fire-fighting, and firemen is a predominant characteristic’. The volunteer firemen in New York City formerly wore buff.

The buff [LME] in the game blind man’s buff [E17th] is an old word for ‘a blow, a buffet’ which survives only in this context. It is not surprising that people want to change the word to something more familiar, and in America the game is called blind man’s bluff. A buffet [ME] was originally a lighter buff. The idea of blows is also found in the buffer [M19th] for a shock-absorbing piston. The sense of buffer found in old buffer [M19th] comes from an old dialect word for someone who stuttered or spluttered.