/blʌf/·verb / noun / adjective·1670s (adjective, of ship bows and headlands); 1714 (verb, to deceive or mislead)·Established
Origin
Bluff derives from Dutch bluffen (to boast, deceive) and Dutch blaf (broad, flat), entering English through seventeenth-century maritime trade, with the poker sense crystallising in American English and German verblüffen (to stupefy) as a close cognate across the WestGermanic family.
Definition
To deceive or intimidate by projecting false confidence or a bold front; as a noun, a steep broad-faced cliff or a high ridge with a nearly vertical face.
The Full Story
Dutch / Low German17th–18th centurywell-attested
English 'bluff' derives from twoclosely related Dutch and Low German sources that converged in meaning. The verb sense — to bluff (to deceive, intimidate, mislead) — enters English through Dutch bluffen, meaning to boast, brag, or mislead at cards, and is reinforced by Middle Dutch bluffen meaning to swell up or puff out (with pride or bravado). The adjective sense — bluff (broad-fronted, flat, blunt) — enters through Dutch blaf and Low German bluff, both meaning flat or broad, applied to wide, nearly vertical cliff-
Did you know?
The Germancognate verblüffen — to bewilder, to stun into confusion — illuminates what bluffing actually does: the bluffer projects amplitude and the audience is dumbfounded. Dutch bluffen entered Englishthrough the same maritime channels that gave us boss, yacht, and skipper, and the noun sense (a steep cliff) took root in American river geography before the poker table gave the verb its sharpest edge in the 1830s.
into English through trade, seafaring, and colonial encounter. Words like 'skipper', 'yacht', 'sloop', and 'boom' entered English the same way. The adjective 'bluff' as applied to ship bows — a bluff-bowed vessel had a broad, nearly vertical prow — is attested from the late 17th century. The broader figurative sense of blunt or outspoken manner followed naturally. The verb/game sense was well established in English by the early 18th century and crystallised into the modern poker sense in 19th-century American English as card-playing culture spread westward. The PIE root proposed for both strands is *bhleu-, meaning to swell or blow up, which also underlies Latin flare (to blow) and English 'blow' — connecting the idea of puffing oneself up with the flat, swollen profile of a bluff cliff. The dual-origin pattern — one strand from nautical geography, one from card-table bravado — is unusual and gives 'bluff' its characteristic ambiguity between physical form and deliberate deception. Key roots: *bhleu- (Proto-Indo-European: "to swell, blow, puff out"), *bluf- (Proto-Germanic: "flat, broad; puffed, swollen"), bluffen (Middle Dutch: "to puff up, boast, mislead").