befeather
befeather verb: to deck or cover with feathers.
Verb
befeather (third-person singular simple present befeathers, present participle befeathering, simple past and past participle befeathered)
- To deck or cover with feathers.
- 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
- 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
Forms of befeather
| third-person singular present | befeathers |
|---|---|
| present participle | befeathering |
| past participle | befeathered |
| past | befeathered |
Origin of befeather
From be- + feather.
Questions about befeather
- What does befeather mean?
- Befeather means to deck or cover with feathers.
- What part of speech is befeather?
- Befeather is a verb.
- What is the past tense of befeather?
- The past tense of befeather is befeathered.
Words near befeather in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: befeather (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “befeather.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/befeather. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
