Feet up

CALL it a New Year’s resolution but I’m on a mission to bring back the tuffet.

A recitation of old nursery rhymes with a young friend and a general tendency towards obsessive compulsion had me researching the meaning of the word with vigour.

According to several online dictionaries tuffet is from the French ‘touffet’ meaning ‘little tuft’, and was applied several centuries ago to a small soft seat. It is now obsolete except for its appearance in the rhyme Little Miss Muffet.