muff

A piece of fur or cloth, usually with open ends, used for keeping the hands warm.

Selwyn, sitting up rumpled and cross-legged on the floor, after having boloed Drina to everybody's exquisite satisfaction, looked around at the sudden rustle of skirts to catch a glimpse of a vanishing figure—a glimmer of ruddy hair and the white curve of a youthful face, half-buried in a muff.

The vulva or vagina; pubic hair around it.

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A woman or girl.

A blown cylinder of glass which is afterward flattened out to make a sheet.

The feathers sticking out from both sides of the face under the beak of some birds.

A fool, a stupid or poor-spirited person.

Can you fancy that such an old creature (an old muff, as you call him, you wicked, satirical man!) could ever make en impression on my heart?

[…]being good is so much like being a muff, generally.

An error, a mistake; a failure to hold a ball when once in the hands.

A bird, the whitethroat.

To drop or mishandle (the ball, a catch etc.); to play badly.

To mishandle; to bungle.

But then, supposing this was the real sign? … They had muffed three already; they daren’t muff the fourth.

Here was the superlative opportunity to make a generous and lasting settlement from a position of strength; but the pieds noirs, like the Israelis, and from not altogether dissimilar motives, were to muff it.