tuft

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

• noun A short cluster of elongated strands, as of yarn, hair, or grass, attached at the base or growing close together.
• noun A dense clump, especially of trees or bushes.
• intransitive verb To furnish or ornament with tufts or a tuft.
• intransitive verb To pass threads through the layers of (a quilt, mattress, or upholstery), securing the thread ends with a knot or button.
• intransitive verb To separate or form into tufts.
• intransitive verb To grow in a tuft.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A green knoll. See toft.
• noun A grove; a plantation; a clump.
• To beat up (a thicket or covert) in stag-hunting.
• To separate or combine into tufts.
• To affix a tuft to: cover or stud with tufts, or as if with tufts.
• In upholstery, to draw together (a cushion or an upholstered covering) by passing a thread through it at regular intervals, the depressions thus produced being usually covered with tufts or buttons.
• To grow in tufts; form a tuft or tufts.
• noun A bunch of soft and flexible things fixed at the base with the upper part loose, especially when the whole is small: as, a tuft of feathers.
• noun A turban.
• noun A crest.
• noun An imperial.
• noun In anat, a rete; a glomerulus. See cut under Malpighian.
• noun In botany, a fascicle of flowers on their several partial peduncles; a cluster of radical leaves; a clump or tussock of stems from a common root, as in many grasses and sedges; hence, any analogous bundle.
• noun An undergraduate who bears a title: so called from the tuft worn on his cap to indicate his rank.

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

• noun A collection of small, flexible, or soft things in a knot or bunch; a waving or bending and spreading cluster.
• noun A cluster; a clump.
• noun Cant, Eng. A nobleman, or person of quality, especially in the English universities; -- so called from the tuft, or gold tassel, on the cap worn by them.
• intransitive verb To grow in, or form, a tuft or tufts.
• transitive verb To separate into tufts.
• transitive verb To adorn with tufts or with a tuft.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A bunch of feathers, grass or hair, etc., held together at the base.
• noun A cluster of threads drawn tightly through upholstery, a mattress or a quilt, etc., to secure and strengthen the padding.
• noun A small clump of trees or bushes.
• noun historical A gold tassel on the cap worn by titled undergraduates at English universities.
• noun A person entitled to wear such a tassel.
• verb transitive To provide or decorate with a tuft or tufts.
• verb transitive To form into tufts.
• verb transitive To secure and strengthen (a mattress, quilt, etc.) with tufts.
• verb intransitive To be formed into tufts.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a bunch of feathers or hair
• noun a bunch of hair or feathers or growing grass