- one of the many soft light parts covering a bird’s body
- a peacock feather
- tail/flight/wing feathers
- a feather pillow (= one containing feathers)
Extra ExamplesTopics Birdsb2- I had to pluck the dead hen's feathers.
- Its feathers were ruffled by the chill breeze.
- The chicks have grown their adult feathers.
- The owl fluffed out its feathers.
- a fledgling with new flight feathers
- a swan preening its feathers
- the downy feathers on the duck's breast
Oxford Collocations Dictionaryadjective- breast
- neck
- tail
- …
- preen
- fluff
- fluff out
- …
- bed
- mattress
- pillow
- …
- as light as a feather
Word OriginOld English fether, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch veer and German Feder, from an Indo-European root shared by Sanskrit patra ‘wing’, Latin penna ‘feather’, and Greek pteron, pterux ‘wing’.
Idioms
See feather in the Oxford Advanced American DictionarySee feather in the Oxford Learner's Dictionary of Academic Englishbirds of a feather (flock together)
- (saying) people of the same sort (are found together)
a feather in your cap
- an action that you can be proud of
ruffle somebody’s/a few feathers
- (informal) to annoy or upset somebody or a group of people
- The senator's speech ruffled a few feathers in the business world.
smooth (somebody’s) ruffled feathers
- to make somebody feel less angry or offended
you could have knocked me down with a feather
- (informal) used to express surprise
Check pronunciation:
feather