in the buff
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
naked or without clothes
Literally: in the buff
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Wild thing: as much in common with farmed salmon as Caroline Cossey with Mother Theresa
I've played a lot of these poker games in my time as a computer own, and none of them have been any cop (especially bad was Maria Whittaker's Christmas Box).
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Figurative class: Euphemism (PIE-English corpus, CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-31). Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “in the buff” mean?
naked or without clothes Literally: in the buff
Is “in the buff” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.