preen
verb/priːn/
/priːn/
Verb Forms
| present simple I / you / we / they preen | /priːn/ /priːn/ |
| he / she / it preens | /priːnz/ /priːnz/ |
| past simple preened | /priːnd/ /priːnd/ |
| past participle preened | /priːnd/ /priːnd/ |
| -ing form preening | /ˈpriːnɪŋ/ /ˈpriːnɪŋ/ |
- [transitive, intransitive] preen (yourself) (usually disapproving) to spend a lot of time making yourself look attractive and then admiring your appearance
- Will you stop preening yourself in front of the mirror?
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- [transitive] preen yourself (on something) (usually disapproving) to feel very pleased with yourself about something and show other people how pleased you areTopics Personal qualitiesc2
- [intransitive, transitive] preen (itself) (of a bird) to clean itself or make its feathers smooth with its beak
Word Originlate Middle English: apparently a variant of obsolete prune (based on Latin ungere ‘anoint’), in the same sense, associated with Scots and northern English dialect preen ‘pierce, pin’ (because of the “pricking” action of the bird's beak).
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