Dictionary

befeather en · VERB

Etymology

From be- + feather.

Meanings

1. (transitive) To deck or cover with feathers.
   • In fact, Grace found it very difficult to find a milliner who, if left to her own devices, would not befeather and beflower her past all self-recognition, giving to her that generally betousled and fly-away air which comes straight from the demi-monde of Paris. 1871, Harriet Beecher Stowe, chapter 25, in Pink and White Tyranny, Boston: Roberts Brothers, page 291:
   • The men were not ill made, but they disfigured themselves with grease and coarse paint; they were of a dark copper-colour, with lank black hair, which they tied in a knot behind; but they so bepowdered, or rather befeathered it with down, that the colour was hardly discernible […] 1785, John Rickman, Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage, to the Pacific Ocean: on Discovery, London: E. Newbery, Part 2, pp. 223-224:
   • They were making a human fetish doll out of clay, painting and befeathering it, offering yuca to it. 2001, Leonard Clark, The Rivers Ran East:

Forms