Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun One of the feathers of a bird's tail; specifically, the rectrices, or rudder-feathers, usually stiff pennaceous feathers, always devoid of a hyporachis, as distinguished from the tectrices or tail-coverts.
Etymologies
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Examples
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In the morning, he was sound asleep beside me, and on my blanket rested a small parcel, done up in a sheet of thin paper, fastened with the tail-feather of a woodpecker thrust through the sheet.
Sick Cycle Carousel 2010
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Well, Hitchens, I know you want to keep shakin 'that tail-feather of yours, but it looks like the band's all worn out.
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Peacocks with tail-feather eyes, like no other kind of eye in nature for size, or colour, or lidlessness, or shape.
Safari Park poem Adam Roberts Project 2007
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While not begrudging anyone the right to shake a tail-feather when a kind-hearted DJ spins "Boogie Wonderland" or "Boogie Nights" or even the 1978 classic "Boogie Oogie Oogie," -- anything Boogie-based will do -- the suit does allege that Dr. Trusty's drilling went bad as he danced, when the bit on the end of the instrument broke and ended up lodged near her eye socket.
Another Comedown? 2007
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Peacocks with tail-feather eyes, like no other kind of eye in nature for size, or colour, or lidlessness, or shape.
Archive 2007-09-01 Adam Roberts Project 2007
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Lastly, she put her dead husband's wig on the bare scalp of the pumpkin, and surmounted the whole with a dusty three-cornered hat, in which was stuck the longest tail-feather of a rooster.
Short Stories of Various Types Various
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Water was pouring off the eaves in great streams, branches were dripping, and some chickens huddled in a fence corner in the adjoining yard were so dejected that not even an aspiring tail-feather pointed heavenward.
Chicken Little Jane Lily Munsell Ritchie
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Fortunately he was successful, and attached to a tail-feather of the carrier-pigeon was found a small tube with this message in it:
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The original Jason in the fable let loose a dove upon the waters, and the dove lost only a tail-feather or two when the clashing islands clashed their worst, and in the moment of the rebound the Argo swept through in safety.
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 12, No. 29, August, 1873 Various
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I had a heap of fun, and nothing went by me so fast that I didn't at least get a tail-feather.
Kindred of the Dust 1918
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