Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Feather \Feath"er\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Feathered; p. pr. & vb. n. Feathering.]
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To furnish with a feather or feathers, as an arrow or a cap.
An eagle had the ill hap to be struck with an arrow feathered from her own wing.
--L'Estrange. -
To adorn, as with feathers; to fringe.
A few birches and oaks still feathered the narrow ravines.
--Sir W. Scott. -
To render light as a feather; to give wings to.[R.]
The Polonian story perhaps may feather some tedious hours.
--Loveday. -
To enrich; to exalt; to benefit.
They stuck not to say that the king cared not to plume his nobility and people to feather himself.
--Bacon.
--Dryden. -
To tread, as a cock.
--Dryden.To feather one's nest, to provide for one's self especially from property belonging to another, confided to one's care; -- an expression taken from the practice of birds which collect feathers for the lining of their nests.
To feather an oar (Naut), to turn it when it leaves the water so that the blade will be horizontal and offer the least resistance to air while reaching for another stroke.
To tar and feather a person, to smear him with tar and cover him with feathers, as a punishment or an indignity.
Feathered \Feath"ered\, a.
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Clothed, covered, or fitted with (or as with) feathers or wings; as, a feathered animal; a feathered arrow.
Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury.
--Shak.Nonsense feathered with soft and delicate phrases and pointed with pathetic accent.
--Dr. J. Scott. Furnished with anything featherlike; ornamented; fringed; as, land feathered with trees.
(Zo["o]l.) Having a fringe of feathers, as the legs of certian birds; or of hairs, as the legs of a setter dog.
(Her.) Having feathers; -- said of an arrow, when the feathers are of a tincture different from that of the shaft.
Wiktionary
1 covered with feathers 2 (context rowing English) having the blades of oars or propellers parallel to the direction of motion 3 (context engineering manufacturing English) of a finely bevelled edge 4 (Appalachian) badly beaten v
(en-past of: feather)
WordNet
having or covered with feathers or plumage; "our feathered friends" [ant: unfeathered]
Wikipedia
Usage examples of "feathered".
He is rather like that detestable and spidery thing the araucaria, which has a wound for every tender hand, and invites no bright-eyed feathered songsters to perch or build among its sinister branches.
Within the pile of sand and soil and rock from which the pansies sprouted, were a maze of tiny crevices and caverns, and from each peeked the feathered head of an axolotl, speckled and foolish.
Legion General Bill Booly followed the corridor that circled the outer edge of the wheel-shaped space station, he found himself rubbing shoulders with all manner of fellow beings, including brightly feathered Prithians, hulking Hudathans, work-worn androids, exoskeleton-clad Dwellers, cybernetic humans, and more.
He found square log houses, caulked with moss, deer pounds, birchbark canoes and bows of sycamore with arrows feathered with goose quills.
All of a sudden the musicians donned feathered hats like the ones we wear with our folk costumes, and did a takeoff on a cimbalom ensemble.
Instead of being huge and horrifying, they are brightly feathered and often beautifully singing close relatives of dromaeosaurid dinosaurs: the birds.
Mennonite preachers, he, here named never to be named again, inspects the dike tops, the enrockment and the groins, and drives off the pigs, because according to the Rural Police Regulations of November 1848, Clause 8, all animals, furred and feathered, are forbidden to graze and burrow on the dike.
From a distance he had not been able to determine what it was made of, but now he discerned that it was of whole skins of some brightly feathered birds, and that in the morning light it shimmered with rainbows of colors, like the fine feathers of pigeons he had seen in Europe, though the general feathering was much lighter in hue.
For the roosters, after months of peaceful childhood and adolescence, had suddenly become inhabited both by devils andjjy an insatiable appetite for feathered pussy, and this combination caused them to go positively gaga with lust.
Now and then the Goodwife glimpsed the bright fabrics and feathered wings of those called the Icarii, and she wondered what the gorgeous creatures could want here.
These creatures were the product of long breeding, the quadrupeds and hexapods heavily haired, the big neomoas similarly well feathered.
Zar might have forgotten his inherent ruthlessness where his feathered informer was concerned, had not Kaw become a trifle too insistent in his exhortations to action.
He had a narrow, knuckly, intelligent face beneath a feathered cap, and he wore a stiff crewelworked doublet that, with its huge shoulders and waistless line, made him look a good deal like a jack of diamonds.
The green flanks of the uplands, all feathered with bamboo interspersed with the dark, glinting green of breadfruit and the sudden Bengal fire of Flame of the Forest, gave way to the lower forests of ebony, mahogany, mahoe and logwood.
He smoothed a dab of makeup across her cheekbones and feathered it down her cheeks, stroked mascara into her eyelashes, brushed lipstick onto her mouth.