puff

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A short forceful exhalation of breath.
• noun A short sudden gust of wind.
• noun A brief sudden emission of air, vapor, or smoke.
• noun A short sibilant sound produced by a puff.
• noun An amount of vapor, smoke, or similar material released in a puff.
• noun An act of drawing in and expelling the breath, as in smoking tobacco.
• noun A swelling or rounded protuberance.
• noun Puff pastry.
• noun A light soft pad for applying powder or lotion.
• noun A gathered, protruding portion of fabric.
• noun A light padded bed covering.
• noun An approving or flattering recommendation.
• noun A piece of writing, as on the jacket of a book, containing often exaggerated praise, used for promotional purposes.
• noun Genetics A localized region of swelling in certain chromosomes indicating the active synthesis of RNA.
• intransitive verb To blow in puffs.
• intransitive verb To come forth in puffs.
• intransitive verb To breathe forcefully and rapidly.
• intransitive verb To emit puffs.
• intransitive verb To take puffs on smoking material.
• intransitive verb To swell or seem to swell, as with pride or air. Often used with up.
• intransitive verb To emit or give forth in puffs.
• intransitive verb To impel with puffs.
• intransitive verb To smoke (a cigar, for example).
• intransitive verb To inflate or distend.
• intransitive verb To fill with pride or conceit.
• intransitive verb To publicize with often exaggerated praise.

from The Century Dictionary.

• An exclamation of contempt or impatience.
• To blow with quick, intermittent blasts; emit a whiff, as of wind, air, or smoke.
• To blow, as an expression of scorn or contempt; snort; sneer.
• To breathe with agitation, as after violent exertion.
• To act or move with flurry and a swelling, bustling appearance; assume importance.
• To blow; send forth in quick short blasts or whiffs; drive with a blast.
• To draw smoke through, or send out smoke from.
• To fill, inflate, or expand with breath or air, and figuratively with pride, vanity, conceit, etc.; swell: frequently with up: as, puffed up with success; puffed with ambition.
• To praise with exaggeration; give undue or servile praise to.
• In botany, to discharge suddenly a clond of spores, as frequently occurs in certain fungi.
• noun A sharp, forcible blast; a whiff; a sudden emission, as of air from the mouth, or smoke from the stack of an engine; also, as much as is suddenly so emitted at one time.
• noun A puffball.
• noun An inflated, swollen, light, fluffy, or porous thing or part.
• noun A light, porous, spongy, or friable cake, generally filled with preserve or the like: as, cream-puffs; jam-puffs.
• noun An implement consisting of swan's down or a wad of flossy or loose texture, used for applying powder to the hair or skin. See powderpuff.
• noun Exaggerated or undue praise uttered or written from an interested point of view; especially, a written commendation of a book, an actor's or a singer's performance, a tradesman's goods, or the like.
• noun One who is puffed up; an inflated, conceited person.
• noun One who writes puffs.
• noun A small vessel with minute openings for scattering liquid perfumes.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun A sudden and single emission of breath from the mouth; hence, any sudden or short blast of wind; a slight gust; a whiff.
• noun Anything light and filled with air. Specifically: (a) A puffball. (b) kind of light pastry. (c) A utensil of the toilet for dusting the skin or hair with powder.
• noun An exaggerated or empty expression of praise, especially one in a public journal.