snuffy

From snuff + -y.

• IPA^(key): /ˈsnʌfi/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

snuffy (comparative snuffier, superlative snuffiest)

1. Soiled with snuff.
2. Resembling or characteristic of snuff.
3. (obsolete, Scotland) Sulky; angry; vexed.
   • May 27 1680, Marchioness de Sévigné, letter to her daughter, published in English in 1745

     I must now let you know what sort of a personage this same First President is; you imagine that he is a disagreeable snuffy old fellow

   • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 3, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:

     The postchaise contained a snuffy old dowager of seventy, with a maid, her contemporary.

4. (slang) Drunk.
   • 2014, Howard Frank Mosher, North Country: A Personal Journey Through the Borderland:

     She could fight, too, when I got snuffy. […] Once I come home from elk camp so drunk I couldn't hardly sit my horse, and Sylvie near to kilt me, she fought me so hard.

5. That causes sniffing and nasal irritation due to dust.
   • 1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 32:

     Giving that up, she took a broom and a duster and went upstairs to housemaid Mrs Dibble's bedroom, with her head tied up in a coloured scarf. It was a dusty, snuffy job, for penuriousness in Mrs Dibble refused to throw anything away, including dirt, and if anything fell on the floor it remained there.

• snuffily
• snuffiness

• (drunk): 1873, John Camden Hotten, The Slang Dictionary