This morning an app said it was buffering and that sent me hunting to understand the versatile word’s history. I’ve done this kind of thing since I was a kid because when there’s only three TV channels, you got to fill up the time somehow. Turns out buff has a wacky past - and present. In the Comedy of Errors, DROMIO OF SYRACUSE says, “I know not at whose suit he is arrested well; But he's in a suit of buff which 'rested him, that can I tell”. Buff was a light coloured leather coat, almost like the skin tone, so to be “in the buff” came to mean naked (like that time in 1975 I was chased all around Judy Dulen’s house in a big misunderstanding which I totally explained to her father). But that’s not even the half of it…
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