How To Use Bluff In A Sentence

Having met a good deal of the sea, they knew, like a man who has felt a good deal of the world, that heavy endurance and patient bluffness are safer to get through the waves somehow than sensitive fibre and elegant frame. Springhaven
Just like playing poker, it's all about bluffing. The Sun
‘We have to win,’ the Scotland coach affirms with a bluffness which only Australians can pull off.
Then came a game of bluff with his club spread over two weeks. The Sun
He hoped to strike the camp simultaneously from the north and south, but had not counted on the maze of bluffs and ravines he would have to contend with to get there.

To me he is false, a bluffer, a hypocrite, a sectarian, a coward and an opportunist.
To finish the portrait, the bearing of the gracious Duncan was brief, bluff, and consequential, and the upward turn of his short copper-coloured nose indicated that he was somewhat addicted to wrath and usquebaugh. The Heart of Mid-Lothian
Second, he must not be sophisticated enough to read right through your semi-bluff raise.
Although my teacher certainly wasn't bluffing, I suspect we were both looking for the same thing: a cheap fix of escapism.
It's time to call their bluff. Times, Sunday Times
He is a man of little bluff and much nous. Times, Sunday Times
Next thing you know, she's on "The Today Show" calling the blackmailer's bluff by tearfully going public with the pictures. CNN Transcript Jul 14, 2007
This amounts to little more than a game of blind man 's bluff. Times, Sunday Times
Her never-ending winsomeness seems to ignore the world around her, and the film never calls her bluff.
All the miracle of sails; the steady foresail; the sensitive jibs; the press canvas delicate as bubbles; the reliable main; the bluff topsails; topgallants like eager horses; the impertinent skysails; the jaunty moonraker, were just canvas stretched on poles. The Wind Bloweth
Placing bets and calling bluffs, it's a way to blow off steam from a rigorous course schedule, a camaraderie they all share. Whatever Happened To ... Derek O'Dell, Virginia Tech shooting survivor
He is a man of little bluff and much nous. Times, Sunday Times
The show's executives called her bluff and she walked out. Times, Sunday Times
We also take more risks than men give us credit for which means it can be very hard to tell when a woman is bluffing.
On October 14th the "Schuylkill" arrived at Gashayes Bluff, on the island of St. Simon, where he found Mr. John T. Morgan, superintendent of cutting the timber, but not "a stick of wood cut. The Story of Commodore John Barry
You have to call his bluff. The Sun
Instead they have all called his bluff, and rightly so. Times, Sunday Times
Still early, before eight, but power marimba was pounding out of the restaurant and the chuffs of diesel machinery and screeching of steel-tracked dozers was coming down from the top of the bluff. Kook
Six miles above the forks, on the west side of the Jefferson, there is a bluff or point of a high plain jutting into the valley to the brink of the river, which bears some resemblance to a beaver's head, and goes by that name. Life in the Rocky Mountains
Tired of his boasting, his boss called his bluff.
Jung gave police a heads-up about Saturday's search, and two volunteer reserve officers were jea oreo 04 With over a dozen volunteers trying to catch her, Oreo, a goat that has lived in the bluff along Concorde Avenue in South St. Paul for several years, looks for escape route. News
On the whole, though, this is either a specialist release for real dancehall heads or a bluffer's guide for those wanting to get into the scene.
Being able to call bluffs and recognize poor hands would be especially useful right now in dealing with North Koreas torpedoing of a South Korean ship (and death of 46 sailors). Crocodile Dundee Diplomacy For North Korea
Even more likely, it could be deliberate misdirection, a Nabokovian wink the author shares with the reader perspicacious enough to call his bluff.
They don't bluff about their toughness and certainly eschew the model of the stoical, macho male. Times, Sunday Times
He was a bluff, domineering character who exuded confidence though politically he often showed signs of naivety.
No trees, no bluffs, no cabins, no telegraph poles, nothin '," moaned Red Bill; "nothin 'respectable enough nor big enough to swing the toes of a five-foot man clear o' the ground. JAN, THE UNREPENTANT
It is hard to read the auguries, so complex is this interplay of deception, self-deception, bluster and bluff.
The aptly titled venue was surrounded by a huge gorge, rolling bluffs and a meandering river.
I don't believe he'd really do what he threatens he's only bluffing .
It's time to call their bluff. Times, Sunday Times
There were lights of the fishermen out on the jetty beneath The Bluff - and there was a white shape drifting in the water close to the shore.
He was no fan of the writer, perhaps in part because he saw in him an image of his own romantic emotivism and self-conscious idiosyncratic bluffness.
From the interstate highway which runs nearby, nothing about this bluff looks any different from thousands of others.
You know when others are doing it to you, so call their bluff. The Sun
One of these days someone was going to call his bluff and leap over that desk to clock him one.
He will use a bluff call to make contact with the target telephone and not hang up when the target does. Corporate Cloak and Dagger
The bottom level below the bluffs along the riverside is the seat of the river shipping business, and has as well the usual fringe of low quarters; it is paved, and there is a broad public landing fronted by floating docks, wharf-boats, etc. The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado
In fact there are river banks and bluffs, coulees and crowns, sandhills and blue hills and unnamed prominences, ravines.
The Pacific silverweed prefers sunny coastal dunes to marsh edges, sandy bluffs, wetland meadows and mudflats.
The "Southern Republic," from her immense size and unusually handsome equipment, was a novelty even to the river people; and each afternoon of her starting, crowds came aboard to bid farewell to friends and roam over the vessel, or collected on the bluffs above to see her swing out to the shrill notes of her "calliope," the best and least discordant on the river. Four Years in Rebel Capitals An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death
It is characterized by a permanent stream meandering through steep sandstone bluffs.
He will use a bluff call to make contact with the target telephone and not hang up when the target does. Corporate Cloak and Dagger
The three or four monastery buildings stood alone on a grassy bluff above the river. The Crossing-Place
They think the government is playing a game of bluff.
Bluff Point, Spalding and Sunset Beach residents will have noticed roadside drains in their suburbs have been stencilled with the slogan ‘Water To The River’.
During the breeding season, Prairie Falcons inhabit dry, open areas with cliffs and bluffs for nesting.
I was once more on the Great Conglomerate, -- here, as elsewhere, a picturesque, boldly-featured deposit, traversed by narrow, mural-sided valleys, and tempested by bluff abrupt eminences. The Cruise of the Betsey or, A Summer Ramble Among the Fossiliferous Deposits of the Hebrides. With Rambles of a Geologist or, Ten Thousand Miles Over the Fossiliferous Deposits of Scotland
At the edge of the bluffs, visitors get beautiful views of the ocean and headlands.
The failure of computers to call our bluff is conclusive evidence that we are still on the winning team. Times, Sunday Times
He was screwed; he knew it was time to stop bluffing.
Our ‘content’ should be at all times inept, obscure, bluff, diatribe, baloney, codswallop or at worst irrelevant.
It was obvious his agent was trying to cook up a 10m offer but we called his bluff and his game soon went off the boil. The Sun
It is essential to build up the military option and show that this is not a bluff.
Yet, the threat of military action, or rather the bluff, serves a purpose: Threats of military action militarizes the atmosphere. Trita Parsi: Netanyahu and Threat of Bombing Iran -- The Bluff that Never Stops Giving?
For another Sinhalese story of how a man and his wife "bluffed Filipino Popular Tales
When anybody calls their bluff and punctures this self-delusion, they can only cope by insulting and vilifying their critics.
Such a policy would change the atmosphere and call the Abkhaz bluff -- forcing them to negotiate in earnest and confront the issue that holds the key to their future status: Abkhaz responsibilities to their prewar Georgian population. Bullies of the Caucasus
The bluff was wooded, and we could see but little.
He will use a bluff call to make contact with the target telephone and not hang up when the target does. Corporate Cloak and Dagger
He lives in the lonely lands where mighty rivers twist in long reaches between the barren bluffs; where the prairies stretch out into billowy plains of waving grass, girt only by the blue horizon, plains across whose endless breadth he can steer his course for days and weeks and see neither man to speak to nor hill to break the level; where the glory and the burning splendor of the sunsets kindle the blue vault of heaven and the level brown earth till they merge together in an ocean of flaming fire. Frontier Types
His amiable personality and bluff manner had an impact and he came across as the straightforward soldier, doing his best for the country.
They were to live at the Bluff homestead, a cob house built in 1860 of clay and chopped tussock.
Below stretched Carnmore, a water-filled trench hemmed in by brooding peaks and startling rock bluffs, mile upon mile of rugged isolation.
Blunt Limerick man and bluff Tipperary man did not enjoy the most harmonious of relationships.
He will use a bluff call to make contact with the target telephone and not hang up when the target does. Corporate Cloak and Dagger
Putting on an innocent look, and intent on bluffing it out he said, ‘What makes you say that?’
His denunciation of my research is an audacious bluff, believable only by those who have never opened my book.
This open face makes it impossible for her to bluff.
Call their bluff, get them in and ask their advice. Times, Sunday Times
Broad of beam, heavily sparred, with high freeboard and bluff, Dutchy bow, the Uncle Toby was the slowest, tubbiest, safest, and most fool-proof schooner David Grief possessed. A LITTLE ACCOUNTWITH SWITHIN HALL
However did Mina manage to bluff her way into that job?
his bluff succeeded in getting him accepted
The bluffs or hills which reach the river at this place, on the south, contain allum, copperas, cobalt which had the appearance of soft isinglass, pyrites, and sandstone, the two first very pure. History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. To the Sources of the Missouri, Thence Across the Rocky Mountains and Down the River Columbia to the Pacific Ocean. Performed During the Years 1804-5-6.
The failure of computers to call our bluff is conclusive evidence that we are still on the winning team. Times, Sunday Times
You will also know, as any runner does, that the session has to be completed and, unlike the bluffers who make up the ranks of the political intelligentsia, you do something on a daily basis that is objectively measured.
The gusts picked up the strident calls, braided and unbraided the notes, and rushed the fragments across the bluffs where they teased the larger raven into response. Raven Speak
At one point, when it was just me and her and I had nothing I thought about betting big and bluffing her out, but decided that that would be ungallant on a first date.
We are drifting in the surge line between rock pinnacles and the bluff and I cannot believe my eyes.
This is a very dangerous game because who is to say he will not call their bluff?
Is he going to jump or is he only bluffing?
He is a man of little bluff and much nous. Times, Sunday Times
Kids and parents were taking advantage of the huge snow covered bluff surrounding the park in front of Avalon Heights, flying down it on their sleds, and snowboards for the more experienced.
Yet his bluff and phlegmatic exterior was to some extent illusory. King Edward VIII - The Official Biography
By any name, it is a psychological game of outguessing and outbluffing your opponents, and includes a number of interesting mechanics.
Either Mr Huntingdon would take things into his own hands, and, acting with characteristic impetuosity and bluffness, would most likely hinder where he meant to help forward, or else he would fail perhaps to understand and appreciate his son's views and methods of proceeding, and would prevent a successful issue by his impatience or interference. Amos Huntingdon
Besides, such is the breadth of the upper part of the front of his head, and such the tapering cut-water formation of the lower part, that by obliquely elevating his head, he thereby may be said to transform himself from a bluff-bowed sluggish galliot into a sharppointed New Moby Dick; or the Whale
This could be a great game of bluff. Times, Sunday Times
This amounts to little more than a game of blind man 's bluff. Times, Sunday Times
The slopes between the crags and rocky bluffs were still snowbound and while the snow was soft enough to kick steps into, the ground below was still iron-hard which is usually the result of several weeks of sub-zero temperatures.
According to the world of movies and soap opera, poker is all about bluffing. Times, Sunday Times
Theretairus (Simpson 1926) is known from two specimens (the holotype is a single dentary from Como Bluff), although some consider it to be a juvenile form of Opisthias. The Tuatara -- The Fastest Evolving Animal
He was absolutely right about my bluffing. Christianity Today
Wade was a hearty, bluff, athletic sort of guy.
That sort of bluffing is counterproductive. continue reading ... Balkinization
She glanced off the platform and then back at him, hoping that he would believe her bluff and cough up the money.
The stark rock, fading lower green fields, and deep blue of the ocean comes as a shock after the flat lush landscape and bluff coastline that characterises the rest of the county.
It's time we called their bluff. The Sun
Is she bluffing to get attention? The Sun
They don't bluff about their toughness and certainly eschew the model of the stoical, macho male. Times, Sunday Times
He can force ministers and virtually anyone to bend to his will, and if they are recalcitrant he could call their bluff and take the case to the people.
The gang was grumbling and accusing Bill of being "bluffed" and all that, but they didn't make any effort to attack the man. Pluck on the Long Trail Boy Scouts in the Rockies
He had a bluff and ebullient, although sympathetic manner, and was hospitable, always the life and soul of the party frequently one he had given himself.
Randal's seconder was a bluff yeoman, an outvoter of weight with the agricultural electors. My Novel — Volume 12
Let's call their bluff and see what happens. The Sun
The two men sat on the front steps at "Elm Bluff", and as Prince's eyes wandered over the exceeding beauty of the "great greenery" of velvet lawn, the stately, venerable growth of forest trees, wearing the adolescent mask of tender young foliage, the outlying fields flanking the park, the sunny acres now awave with crinkling mantles of grain, he sighed very heavily at the realization of all that adverse fortune had snatched away. At the Mercy of Tiberius
The show's executives called her bluff and she walked out. Times, Sunday Times
The three or four monastery buildings stood alone on a grassy bluff above the river. The Crossing-Place
The consumer spending crisis has now called their bluff. Times, Sunday Times
Dare they call her bluff and just let her get on with whatever she thought she could do to inconvenience them?
Even if this lotto is bluff, the american express business reply envelope is seemingly legal. Smart Mobs » Blog Archive » Coming soon in the Netherlands - The Mobile Lottery
Dr. Harding, electrician, and Dr. Hilton, allopathist, also graduates, have all the practice they can attend to in Council Bluffs. History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III)
Farther out he can hear hoof-beats and voices, so he edges along westward until he comes suddenly to a depression, a little winding "cooley" across the prairie, through which in the early spring the snows are carried off from some ravine among the bluffs. Marion's Faith.
On the pulse Mr Prescott, I think not; it's the usual bluff and bluster from a man who might actually be less intelligent than he seems. Bluster and bluff from John Prescott
The Wall Street Journal notes Air France's terse statement calls the bluffs of both Alitalia's combative unions and Mr. Berlusconi, which has repeatedly claimed Italian investors were ready to step in but hasn't identified who those investors are. Pre-Parsing
Unlike checkers, the key to poker is to predict whether other players are bluffing. Poker Bots on the Rise: A Guest Blog - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com
Trails on the bluffs offer sights of Benicia and the strait.
The show's executives called her bluff and she walked out. Times, Sunday Times
He was bluffed into supposing I was ill prepared.
What he offers us, with driving energy, is a bluff, dirty-minded NCO who is filled with a rancourous, destructive negativity that leads him to detest Othello for his "free and open nature" and to loathe Cassio for the simple reason "he hath a daily beauty in his life that makes me ugly. Othello – review
She bluffed me into believing that she was an actress.
This gorgeous coastline of ragged bluffs, sea stacks, and mountains could become home.
I knew it, just as I had known it a thousand times at the poker table, facing a thousand other bluffers.
Deep ravines cut the northern shoreline off from inland settlements and transportation routes, and steep shale bluffs made it difficult to land goods on the shore.
Right up to the end the dictator who fooled the world was bluffing - even to his closest aides.
The bluff exterior conceals one of the sharpest political brains for hire. Times, Sunday Times
This amounts to little more than a game of blind man 's bluff. Times, Sunday Times
The show's executives called her bluff and she walked out. Times, Sunday Times
Wade was a hearty, bluff, athletic sort of guy.
Some of the apparent creakiness of the plot turns out to be a bit of a double bluff, and the book rattles along quite painlessly for some 500 pages.
Some thought the bluff carrier commander was borderline nuts.
‘There is no doubt that if he continues to live in west Belfast, life could be made very unpleasant for him, but given his past and his knowledge of internal security methods, he probably thinks he can bluff it out,’ the source said.
He will use a bluff call to make contact with the target telephone and not hang up when the target does. Corporate Cloak and Dagger
The three or four monastery buildings stood alone on a grassy bluff above the river. The Crossing-Place
Now it seems he may have been bluffing all along, thus the efficacy of such a coalition seems doubtful.
But apart from bluffs, tricks, and mayhem, the coming year may be a boon for babies.
To embark on such a policy involved two dangers: the danger of war, and what in Milner's eyes was perhaps even greater, the danger that, by advancing just claims and then, letting ourselves be "bluffed" out of them, we might yet further lessen, and indeed totally destroy, what hold we still possessed upon the affection of the South African British or on the respect either of British or Lord Milner's Work in South Africa From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902
Ironically, the only person outside our inner circle to mention it to me was a young progressive lawyer from Pine Bluff who was a big supporter of mine.
Al Deir is encircled by the rounded bluffs and ridges of a range which plunges 1500 metres to Wadi Araba, a valley linking the Dead Sea to the Red Sea.
He flattered his clients on their excellent judgment in buying from him rather than his competitors, but he could be bluff and straightforward when necessary.
He could bluff his way through any difficulty.
By bluffing and faking, you have to somehow provoke and deceive this system of defense.
They were not his kind of people, the bluff tweedy graziers, the lofty matrons, the toothy, horsy young women, the cream of what the Bulletin called “the squattocracy.” The Thorn Birds
Why can't the majority simply call the blackmailer's bluff - let them filibuster until the cows come home and let the public outrage over their despicable, undemocratic behavior build up over the weeks. Do or Die: The Six Senators Who Will Decide the Fate of Health Care Reform
The fishermen's village at Puerto Santo Tomás is a huddle of terraced shacks on the bluff above the bay.
As well as the fancy rooms upstairs, there are the plainly decorated Bunkhouse rooms, designed to attract younger, bluff, snowboarder types into the Clubhouse.
So let's call the bluffs of know-nothing partisans. Brian Palmer: Facts, Fudge & FOIA
Let's call their bluff and see what happens. The Sun
That manly grip on normality so prized by your Tom Hankses and your Harrison Fords is for Carrey a wild and desperate bluff. The Existential Clown
There were a couple of schooners used in the china-clay trade lying at the quayside; at anchor was a barquentine, a big bluff-bellied tramp of a creature, black with coaldust, and beyond her again what was still a rare sight in those parts -- a steamer. Secret Bread
But I didn't expect to find myself wobbling with fear when they called my bluff. The Sun
Is it a bluff or has he swotted up a bit of Slovak the day before, and is now trying to provoke a challenge? CASCADES - THE DAY OF THE DEAD
Taking all of this into account, though there seemed to be an underlying sadness, I got the distinct impression that his bluff attitude was covering up something.
The Rolls proprieties are observed, of course: the tall, long hood ending in a chromic bluff; the short front overhang; the tapering rear quarters drawn back from the wheels; the steeply sloped C-pillar; the high body-to-glass ratio. Rolls-Royce Builds a Real Car20%
He is kind and friendly despite his rather bluff manner.
The highest of the bluffs, on the west side of the canyon, were part of a massive geological formation in west Texas called the “caprock,” essentially a long seam of rock that underlies the Llano Estacado and becomes an outcropping just at the point where the high plains give way to the lower, rolling plains. EMPIRE OF THE SUMMER MOON
The bottom floor is covered in quartzite stone the hue of the surrounding ocean-side bluffs.
So perhaps we can bluff it out and collect software by day leaving philosophical disquiet to the troubled night.
To bluff, unchanged in form, takes on the new meaning of to lie: a bluffer is a liar. Appendix 2. Non-English Dialects in America. 4. Yiddish
Well, the police are happy they've worked out the bluff but they didn't think as far as a _double _bluff. Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
Yet his bluff and phlegmatic exterior was to some extent illusory. King Edward VIII - The Official Biography
She bluffed the doorman into thinking that she was a reporter.
Do we call a possible bluff? Times, Sunday Times
Pammel Creek originally drained into one of these wetlands but was channelized between 1914 and 1927 to join Bluff Slough, a backwater of the Mississippi River just to the southwest of the site.
It is essential to build up the military option and show that this is not a bluff.
By this time Will had become quite expert, so that there was little danger of what Bluff, taking his cue from the golfers, would have called a "foozle. The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point or The Golden Cup Mystery
At least he was able to sign his name, and bluff people into believing he was not illiterate when collecting dole or wages. THE OPEN DOOR
Bordering areas of private land contain cropland and steep river bluffs. 100 Best Public-Land Hunts: Nebraska
Beneath his bluff exterior, he is a narrow-minded reactionary with merely some financial success.
An elevated tableland averaging about one hundred miles wide and extending four hundred miles north and south, it presents, approaching anywhere from the east or the west, an endless line of sharply escarped bluffs from one hundred to two hundred feet high that with their buttresses and re-entrant angles look at a distance like the walls of an enormous fortified town. The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier
The convict population spoke of him as "that — — Frere," and registered vows of vengeance against him, which he laughed — in his bluffness — to scorn. For the term of his natural life
He planned to fill 172 acres of its bay side and reclaim enough land from all sides of the harbor-even at the foot of the bluffs of the north shore for a scenic parkway for automobiles along the waterfront.
The bluff exterior conceals one of the sharpest political brains for hire. Times, Sunday Times
Is she bluffing to get attention? The Sun
This would be a pity if the Attorney were bluffing.
The river is lined with low bluffs alternating with wetlands, the latter either lightly wooded swamps or open marshes often locally dominated by a single plant species.
He was a broad-shouldered, bluff man, his hair cropped short and curly above his weathered face. THE GOLDEN FOOL: BOOK TWO OF THE TAWNY MAN
Charming houses stand in the "dells," that is, in the umbrageous cul-de-sacs where the graded streets terminate in bluffs too bold to be penetrated. After the Storm: A Story of the Prairie
The man, beneath his coarse and bluff exterior, is haunted by a sense of his own inadequacy.
Yet his bluff and phlegmatic exterior was to some extent illusory. King Edward VIII - The Official Biography
This could be a great game of bluff. Times, Sunday Times
They allow her to reflect on what lies behind his macho, bluff exterior and why she reacts to it in the way that she does, in a supportive, non judgmental setting.
Bobby Rush might call the bluff and dare Harry Reid et al. to consign the lone black Senator to the back of the bus. Elections 2006/2008
In The Lady Eve, Barbara Stanwyck’s impersonation of a British noblewoman is so transparent as to beggar belief, but she successfully calls the bluff of Henry Fonda and his rich brewer father, whose choice to believe her ruse is as much a reflection of their own class insecurity. Archive 2008-09-01
(See #1.) 3) Whether Stupak or the progressives are bluffing is (or will be, eventually) an empirical question. Matthew Yglesias » Defections from the Left
Be evasive in your answers, or try to bluff. How to Face Interviews
The bluff sea-captains and commercial adventurers who founded the Australian colonies had no special gift for symbolism, but they knew what was expected of them.
They had informed him that my attempt was no bluff - it was not done to get attention - a half attempt.
Professional fishermen, Bluff Point residents, surfers and windsurfers expressed strong concerns that dumping would affect the shoreline, surf and crayfish catch.
This year, we achieved nirvana, taking a house nestling under Hay Bluff where, after a morning spent quizzing festival attendees about their literary output, I could slip on my boots and head up the hills with dog and children in tow. Rob Lowe plus books – what could be better? | Mariella Frostrup
He says: 'They know that you know and it becomes a big game of bluff. Times, Sunday Times
It is hard to read the auguries, so complex is this interplay of deception, self-deception, bluster and bluff.
The failure of computers to call our bluff is conclusive evidence that we are still on the winning team. Times, Sunday Times
He is a man of little bluff and much nous. Times, Sunday Times
The large, stone main building sits on a bluff above the confluence of two rivers.

How To Use Bluff In A Sentence

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