tuft

A bunch of feathers, grass or hair, etc., held together at the base.

A cluster of threads drawn tightly through upholstery, a mattress or a quilt, etc., to secure and strengthen the padding.

A small clump of trees or bushes.

“Not far from this place, there is a tuft of about a dozen of tall beeches […].”

A gold tassel on the cap worn by titled undergraduates at English universities.

A person entitled to wear such a tassel.

A college tutor, or a nobleman’s toady, who appears one fine day as my right reverend lord, in a silk apron and a shovel-hat, and assumes benedictory airs over me, is still the same man we remember at Oxbridge, when he was truckling to the tufts, and bullying the poor undergraduates in the lecture-room.

Several young tufts, and others of the faster men.

To provide or decorate with a tuft or tufts.

His tufted cottage rising through the snow

To form into tufts.

To secure and strengthen (a mattress, quilt, etc.) with tufts. This hinders the stuffing from moving.

They're never gonna get that Ottoman tufted in time!

To be formed into tufts.

A surname.