Tuft

1. n. A nobleman, or person of quality, especially in the English universities; — so called from the tuft, or gold tassel, on the cap worn by them.
2. n. A collection of small, flexible, or soft things in a knot or bunch; a waving or bending and spreading cluster; as, a tuft of flowers or feathers.
3. n. A cluster; a clump; as, a tuft of plants.

The word meanings were obtained from OPTED(The Online Plain Text English Dictionary), which is based on “The Project Gutenberg Etext of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary” which is in turn based on the 1913 US Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (See Project Gutenburg), as a text file.