feather

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“

Discontent exaggerates every burden, and a feather is as heavy as a mountain when laid on unwilling shoulders.

—Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete

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American Heritage Dictionary (28)

noun One of the light, flat growths forming the plumage of birds, consisting of numerous slender, closely arranged parallel barbs forming a vane on either side of a horny, tapering, partly hollow shaft.
noun Plumage.
noun Clothing; attire.

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Century Dictionary (65)

One of the epidermal appendages which together constitute the plumage, the peculiar covering of birds; also, collectively, the plumage. Feathers are extremely modified scales. The nearest approach to them in animals other than birds is probably the quills of the porcupine. Feathers are epidermal, non-vascular, and nonnervous appendages. consisting of a horny and pithy substance, and subject to periodical molt. They grow somewhat like hairs, in a little pit or pouch formed by an inversion of the dermal layer of the integument, in a closed follicle, upon a peculiarly molded papilla, which causes the feather to assume its special shape. They are seldom implanted uniformly over the surface, but grow in special tracts or areas separated by naked spaces. (See pteryla, apterium.) All of a bird's feathers collectively considered constitute the plumage or ptilosis. (See cut under bird.) A perfect feather consists of a main stem, shaft, or scape; a supplementary stem, aftershaft, or hyporachis; and vanes, webs, or vexilla: these together making the standard. The scape is divided into two parts: one, nearest the body of the bird, is the barrel, quill, or calamus, a hard, horny, hollow, semi-transparent tube with one end inserted in the skin; it bears no webs, and passes insensibly at a point marked by a little pit (umbilicus) into the shaft proper or rachis. This is squarish in section, tapers to a fine point, is highly elastic, opaque, and solidly filled with dry pith; it bears the vexilla. The aftershaft is usually like a miniature of the main feather, springing from the stem of the latter at the junction of the calamus and rachis. (See aftershaft.) With its vanes it is called the hypoptilum. Sometimes it is as large as the main feather. There are two vanes, on opposite sides of the rachis. Each vane consists of a series of mutually appressed, thin, flat, linear or lancelinear plates, the barbs, set off obliquely from the rachis by their basal ends at a varying open angle. (See cut under barb.) To cause these plates to cohere with one another, and make a webbing of the vane, each barb bears secondary vanes; these are barbules, and bear to the barbs the same relation that the barbs bear to the rachis. Barbules are also fringed, as if frayed out, along their lower edges; each such fringe makes a tertiary vane. When these vanes are simple, they are termed barbicels; when hooked, hooklets or hamuli. (See cut under barbule.) From such perfect structure feathers may be reduced in various ways, even to lacking everything but the shaft; when this is very thick, feathers become much like scales, as in the penguin; when it is fine, they resemble hairs or bristles. In general, three types of feather-structure are recognized: (1) The perfectly feathery, plumous or pennaceous, structure. The goosequill used as a pen is a good example (though it lacks an aftershaft). Most contour-feathers are pennaceous. (2) The downy or plumulaceous, such as makes up the under-plumage or down. (3) The filoplumaceous, which approaches a bristle or hair. (See cut under filoplume.) But there is no strict line of demarcation, and in fact most feathers are pennaceous with plumulaceous bases of the webs. Feathers are also classified as (1) pennæ, plumæ, or contour-feathers; (2) plumulæ, or down-feathers; (3) semiplumæ, or half-feathers; (4) filoplumæ, or threadfeathers; and (5) pulviplumæ, dust-feathers, or powderdown. (See phrases below.) The acquisition of feathers is called endysis; their loss, ecdysis. Birds which acquire feathers in the egg are Præcoces or Ptilopædes; those which are hatched naked are Altrices, Psilopædes, or Gymnopædes. Feathers are of extremely rapid growth. They are of many shapes, often remarkable, and of every possible color. The color is usually due to actual pigmentation, but in many cases to iridescence. The optical effect of iridescence is due to the texture of the webs. Among all epidermal structures, feathers probably combine in the highest degree the qualities of lightness, strength, and elasticity. They are also very warm, and in many cases water-proof. He hathe a Crest of Fedres upon his Hed more gret than the Poocok hathe. Mandeville, Travels, p. 48. All byrdes doe loue by kynde, that are lyke of plume and feather, Good and bad, ye wyld and tame, all kyndes doe draw togyther. Babees Book (E. E. T. S.), p. 89. With the feathers of these wings the muses made themselves crowns, so that from this time the muses wore wings on their heads. Bacon, Moral Fables, vi.
Something in the form of a feather, or resembling nearly or remotely the standard of a feather; something made of feathers. The bents And coarser grass … now shine Conspicuous, and in bright apparel clad, And. fledg'd with icy feathers, nod superb. Cowper, Task, v. 26.
Specifically — A plume.

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She shouldered that weapon as if it was light as a feather, her expression showing the fire burning through her, strength and determination apparent in her stance I appreciate your determination. — O'Clare, Lorie - Sex Slaves Trilogy (v1.0)
The smoothness of the droplet against the feather is awesome — Popular in the last 8 hours
In modern Tusayan ceremonials the feather is appended to almost all the different objects used in worship; it is essential in the structure of the tiponi or badge of the chief, without which no elaborate ceremony can be performed or altar erected; it adorns the images on the altars, decorates the heads of participants, is prescribed for the prayer-sticks, and is always appended to aspergills, rattles, and whistles In the performance of certain ceremonials water from sacred springs is used, and this water, sometimes brought from great distances, is kept in small gourd or clay vases, around the necks of which a string with attached feathers is tied. — Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744
It was very dark, and I knew that as our sails were set, and we bore from her, it would be difficult for her to keep us in sight, as we only presented what we call the feather-edge of our sails to her. — The Privateersman
Had I attempted to prove that the feather which is now preserved with so much care in the Church of San Juan de Lateran at Rome did not fall from the wing of the angel Gabriel when he came to announce to Mary her conception, and that the whole history of that feather was a fable, notwithstanding it has received the attestations of so many of the Holy Fathers, I should be cursed for my impiety no more than I shall be for raising the question of the authenticity of the histories of the Conquest. — Mexico and its Religion With Incidents of Travel in That Country During Parts of the Years 1851-52-53-54, and Historical Notices of Events Connected With Places Visited

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fur · plume · silk · hair · cloth · wing · ribbon · wool · gold · skin · flower · robe

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

American Heritage Dictionary (1)

Middle English fether, from Old English; see pet- in Indo-European roots.

Century Dictionary (2)

Early modern English also fether; from Middle English fether, sometimes feder, from Anglo-Saxon fether, a feather, a pen, in plural often wings (deriv. fithere, a wing), = Old Saxon fethera = Dutch veder = Old High German fedara, Middle High German vedere, veder, German feder, a feather, a pen, = Icelandic fjödhr = Swedish fjäder = Old Danish feder, fejr, fiæthær, feyre, Danish fjeder, fjer (= Gothic (Moesogothic) *fithra, not recorded), feather, = Greek πτερόν (for *πετερόν), a feather, a wing (cf. πτέρνξ, a wing, πτίλον (for *πετίλον), feather, down), = Latin penna, Old Latin pesna (for *petna, with different suffix -na), a feather, a pen (whence English pen), = Old Bulgarian Bulgarian Slov. Servian pero = Bohemian péro = Polish pioro, feather (Old Bulgarian pĭrati, prati, fly), = Sanskrit pattra, a feather, wing, leaf, patatra, a wing, cf. patara, adjective, flying, from √ pat, fly, descend, fall, = Greek πέτεσθαι, fly, redupl. πίπτειν, fall, = Latin petere, fall upon, make for, seek (whence English petition, appetence, compete, etc.).
from Middle English fetheren, fethren, fedren, usually in past participle fethered, rarely ‘fly,’ provided with feathers, from Anglo-Saxon ge-fetheran, ge-fethran (properly *ge-fetherian, *ge-fethrian), usually ge-fitherian, ge-fytherian, ge-fithrian, give wings, provide with wings (= Old High German past participle ge-fidarit, Middle High German ge-videret, German ge-fiedert = Swedish befja̤drat = Old Danish befedret, Danish befjedret), from fether, a feather, plural wings, fithere, wing: see feather, n.

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/ˈfɛðər/

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