duffer

Cognate with duff, which see (origin is uncertain).

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈdʌfɚ/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈdʌfə/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌfə(ɹ)

duffer

1. comparative form of duff: more duff

duffer (plural duffers)

1. (informal) An incompetent, indolent, or clumsy person.
   • 1899 March, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number MI, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part II:

     Besides, I was anxious to take the wheel, the man in pink pyjamas showing himself a hopeless duffer at the business.

2. (sports) A player having little skill, especially a golfer who duffs.
3. (archaic) A pedlar or hawker, especially one selling cheap or substandard goods.
4. (archaic) Cheap or substandard goods sold by a duffer.
5. (archaic) Anything substandard, such as a counterfeit or a defective instance.

   Synonym: duff

6. (dated) A cow that does not produce milk or produces substantially less than her peers do.

   Synonym: (archaic) strapper

   • 1908, Proceedings of the Agricultural Society of Trinidad and Tobago, volume 8, page 116:

     We have some good cows in this State, but, unfortunately, we have too many duffer cows that are not only being fed and milked at a loss but are eating up a portion of the profit of the good cow which is being milked alongside them.

   • 1934, Victorian Department of Agriculture, Journal of Agriculture, volume 32, page 293:

     The truth is that cattlemen love a typical cow for her beauty and symmetry of form; but every herd-testing dairyman knows that an ugly animal may be a good producer, while many a beautiful cow is a duffer.

7. (Australia, dated) A cattle thief or thief of other livestock; one who alters the brands of cattle.
   • 2004, Deborah Bird Rose, Reports from a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation‎, page 112:

     Judy was an associate (‘stud’) of a Whitefella cattle duffer named Brigalow Bill (aka WJJ Ward).

   • 2005 February 2, “Alleged sheep duffer charged”, in The Northern Daily Leader‎:
   • 2010, Evan McHugh, The Drovers:

     In the mid-1860s a duffer named James Harnell, who went by the nickname Narran Jim, had taken stock he′d stolen from the district around Culgoa and Narran rivers across Queensland to the Cooper. […] An alert Bulloo Downs stockman contacted the police, and when Police Inspector Fitzgerald and eight Aboriginal troopers tracked Narran Jim and surrounded him while he was sleeping, the cattle duffer woke to find himself looking down the barrel of Fitzgerald′s revolver and seven years in jail.

   • 2011, Clancy Tucker, Gunnedah Hero, unnumbered page:

     The cattle duffer′s escape would have been impeded by those young ones. Calves can be unruly unless you move them carefully in the company of their mothers.

   • 2015 March 11, Terry Sim, “Greg’s Electronic Shepherd will hear dogs and sheep duffers coming 24/7”, in Sheep Central‎:

     His book-sized Electronic Shepherd prototype is sensitive enough to hear a sheep bleating, a dog barking, a whistle or human command, or even the vehicle or mustering dogs of a potential sheep duffer.

8. A racing pigeon that does not perform well.
9. (entomology) Any of various nymphalid butterflies of the genus Discophora.

• (incompetent person): see Thesaurus:unskilled person
• (livestock thief): see Thesaurus:rustler

• “duffer”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

• ruffed