Word.ws English Dictionary

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)

  1. (transitive) 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 presentbefeathers
present participlebefeathering
past participlebefeathered
pastbefeathered

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

  1. befanging
  2. befangled
  3. befangs
  4. befanned
  5. befast
  6. befeather
  7. befeathered
  8. befeathering
  9. befeathers
  10. befel
  11. befeld

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.

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