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huff and puff
huff and puff
Fig. to breathe very hard; to pant as one exerts effort. John came up the stairs huffing and puffing. He huffed and puffed and finally got up the steep hill.
huff and puff
1. to breathe in a noisy manner He was on the top of the hill long before I came up huffing and puffing behind him.
2. to complain The owners will huff and puff about their financial problems and then not do anything to solve them.
huff and puff
1. to breathe noisily, usually because you have been doing physical exercise They're so unfit they start huffing and puffing if they have to run further than twenty yards.
2. (informal) to complain noisily about something but not be able to do anything about it They huffed and puffed about the price, but eventually they paid up.
huff and puff
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.