bluff

The bluff and businesslike Agrippa, not prone to exaggeration, deems it “the day on which the fate of the world would be decided.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026

“I think the best way to put it is that the market is calling his bluff on inflation,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 29, 2026

Is it possible, many have wondered, to foresee when and where a bluff might collapse — and perhaps even turn these predictions into early warning alerts?

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 14, 2026

“And he doesn’t bluff, either. What he does is groom us. He prepares us for things that would otherwise be unthinkable.”

From Salon ● May 26, 2026

They turned the corner and soon were driving along a high, grassy bluff that sloped down to a glistening river that flowed through the main part of town.

From "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy

Separately, it emerged at an ongoing inquiry that Mr Williams had described a campaigner who tried to draw attention to faults in Horizon software in 2015 as a "bluffer".

From BBC ● Apr. 18, 2024

He was a bluffer, implying he advised people he didn’t, and a leaker, ratting out his allies in pursuit of his own agenda.

From Slate ● Aug. 3, 2016

A bluffer, a gambler… he’d rather do it the hard way.

From New York Times ● Feb. 29, 2012

He'd been a bit of a bluffer at his first musical conservatoire.

From The Guardian ● Nov. 23, 2010

Now I had always sized up the Colonel for a bluffer.

From Fore! by Charles Emmett Van Loan

Preparatory work had been done by a committee headed by Arthur Balfour Baron Riverdale of Sheffield, 62, one of Britain's biggest, baldest, blondest, bluffest steel tycoons.

From Time Magazine Archive

Biggest and bluffest of the four executive vice presidents is balding, 61-year-old Marvin E. Coyle, known as "Mr. Facts & Figures."

From Time Magazine Archive

In his bluffest and heartiest way Blake refused to hear of such a thing.

From Love Eternal by Henry Rider Haggard

At this stroke the man began to get angry; he frowned, and in his bluffest tone, began: "Look here now, you—" "Ta, ta, ta," interrupted M. Lecoq.

From The Mystery of Orcival by Émile Gaboriau

Among the latter may be classed Karl Steinmetz—the bluffest of the bluff—innocent even of his own innocence.

From The Sowers by Henry Seton Merriman

Liccardo also asked for nearly $1 million in promised funds from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for a handrail project on the pier and an additional $9 million to protect coastal bluffs.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 16, 2026

It was the culmination of a series of feints and bluffs in the preceding hours and days as the former reality TV star kept the world guessing.

From Barron's ● Feb. 28, 2026

At a Sunday morning memorial, club members and friends walked together along the bluffs at Lovers Point, tracing the route of Fox’s final mile in the water, the Mercury News reported.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 29, 2025

But she made a beeline back to the coast, settling in the craggy bluffs outside desirable Topanga.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 17, 2025

It’s a town of beaches and bluffs on the tip of the south fork.

From "Adrift" by Paul Griffin

Later, when sent to a chemical plant, he volunteered to work as a welder and bluffed his way through a quiz designed to test his qualifications.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 2, 2026

He bluffed, saying he had no debit card.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 20, 2025

He had a talent for making people laugh, a skill he honed one summer as a Catskills resort social director, and bluffed his way into a prestigious theater training program in Manhattan, the Neighborhood Playhouse.

From Washington Post ● Jul. 7, 2022

Graham Paddison, of David Duggleby Auctioneers in Scarborough who are selling the lot, said that Mr Hill "bluffed" his way into the room where the Beatles were talking to the press.

From BBC ● Jun. 23, 2022

Okay, she often bluffed and implied all sorts of things I knew weren’t true.

From "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro

As it turned out, the bluffing may have been unnecessary.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 25, 2026

Mehdi, a 58-year-old salesman believes the opposite, saying that "the Americans are bluffing" and that "the negotiations will be 100% successful".

From Barron's ● Feb. 25, 2026

Armed only with a lamp, he managed to scare off the men by bluffing that he had a gun, causing them to flee the scene empty-handed.

From BBC ● Feb. 3, 2026

Beneath all the bluffing lies a determination of credibility.

From Slate ● Nov. 20, 2025

Perhaps, as some historians have argued, South Carolina and Georgia were bluffing.

From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis