what is chaff

Quick Scoop

“Chaff” has a few common meanings, but the most basic one is the dry outer husk separated from grain like wheat. It can also mean something useless or worthless, and in military use it refers to tiny metal strips released by aircraft to confuse radar.

Main meanings

• Agriculture: the outer seed coverings removed during threshing or winnowing.

• Figurative speech: the useless part, as in “separate the wheat from the chaff”.

• Military: radar-decoy strips of aluminum, metallized glass fiber, or plastic used as a countermeasure.

Simple example

If a farmer removes husks from grain, the husks are chaff. If a plane drops metallic strips to mislead radar, that is also called chaff.

Bottom line

If you meant the everyday word, chaff is the dry outer covering of grain; if you meant the defense term, it is a radar-decoy material.