Feather

How to spell feather

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce feather

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does feather mean?

1. nounOne of the light, flat growths that form the plumage of a bird.
2. verbTo turn an oar or blade so that it passes through air or water edge-on, reducing resistance.

Feather in a sentence

• noun

  A single feather drifted down from the pigeon on the ledge.

• verb

  The rower learned to feather the oar smoothly on the recovery stroke.

• noun

  The pillow lost its softness once every feather had clumped together.

• verb

  The pilot will feather the propeller to cut drag after the engine fails.

Where does feather come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word, descending from Old English feþer, which already meant a feather or plume. It traces back to a Germanic root shared with Dutch veer and German Feder, and ultimately to the ancient Indo-European root pet-, meaning 'to fly' or 'to rush'. That same flight-related root produced the Latin penna 'feather, wing' (the source of 'pen' and 'pinnate') and the Greek pteron 'wing' (seen in 'helicopter' and 'pterodactyl'). The spelling keeps the old 'ea' vowel cluster and the 'th' that softened over time, so although the word sounds simple, the 'ea' is the small trap: it represents a short 'e' sound rather than the long sound 'ea' often carries elsewhere. The figurative sense, as in 'a feather in one's cap', grew from the old custom of adding a feather to headgear to mark an achievement.

How the word is built

• feather (from Old English feþer, a plume); a single root with no separable prefix or suffix, the final -er belonging to the original word rather than being an added suffix