deplumation

Noun

deplumation (usually uncountable, plural deplumations)

1. (usually) The stripping or falling off of plumes or feathers.
   • […] through the violence of her moulting, or deplumation, she comes into this earthly body deprived of that blessed life which she before enjoyed.1662, Edward Stillingfleet, Origines Sacrae
2. (usually) Loss of the eyelashes due to disease of the eyelids.
   • Systemic symptoms include headache, anorexia and sometimes nausea, vomiting, tinnitus and deafness, and deplumation or bleaching of the hair may occur.1979, Historia Ophthalmologica Internationalis - Volume 1, page 94
   • I hope now the violence both of his tartian [=tertian] ague & feaver & the deplun [=deplumation], which has been so troublesome in his eyes as since his last writing to your worships to quite deprive him of his sight, is gone of2006, The English in West Africa, 1691-1699: The Local Correspondence of the Royal African Company of England, 1681-1699, page 340
3. (figuratively, usually) The stripping of someone's symbol(s) of status and prestige; humiliation.
   • If any person wishes to see one of the most neat, elegant, and at the same time thorough cases of deplumation, any where to be found in literary history, in which an individual who strutted on to the stage as a peacock, was soon obliged to leave it as a dove, he has only to read Dr. Beck's articles...1851, Horace Mann, Slavery: Letters and Speeches, page 318
   • If the humiliation and baseness of such an acquiescence would not have revolted the self-love and pride of a man like Sir Philip Francis, at any rate he was not a fool, and the mere risk of detection and deplumation, which might have happened any day, would have prevented him from enduring his...1861, A Compendious History of English Literature