English▸ noun a person, particularly a man, who is rough or clumsy and unintelligent:
they are just big, clumsy oafs.
– ORIGIN early 17th century: variant of obsolete auf, from Old Norse álfr ‘elf’. The original meaning was ‘elf's child, changeling’, later ‘idiot child’ and ‘halfwit’, generalized in the current sense.