Word.ws English Dictionary

pull someone's plumes

pull someone's plumes verb: to humble, to puncture the pride of.

Verb

pull someone's plumes (third-person singular simple present pulls someone's plumes, present participle pulling someone's plumes, simple past and past participle pulled someone's plumes)

  1. (idiomatic, obsolete) To humble, to puncture the pride of
    • that Tamburlaine:
      That like a Foxe in midſt of harueſt time,
      Dooth pray vppon my flockes of Passengers:
      And as I heare, doth meane to pull my plumes […]c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC...
    • Let frantike Talbot triumph for a while,
      And like a Peacock ſweepe along his tayle,
      Wee’le pull his Plumes, and take away his Trayne,
      If Dolphin and the reſt will be but rul’d.1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...

Forms of pull someone's plumes

third-person singular presentpulls someone's plumes
present participlepulling someone's plumes
past participlepulled someone's plumes
pastpulled someone's plumes

Questions about pull someone's plumes

What does pull someone's plumes mean?
Pull someone's plumes means to humble, to puncture the pride of.
What part of speech is pull someone's plumes?
Pull someone's plumes is a verb.
What is the past tense of pull someone's plumes?
The past tense of pull someone's plumes is pulled someone's plumes.

Words near pull someone's plumes in the dictionary

  1. pull someone's chain
  2. pull someone's chestnuts out of the fire
  3. pull someone's fat out of the fire
  4. pull someone's leg
  5. pull someone's plonker
  6. pull someone's plumes
  7. pull start
  8. pull starts
  9. pull station
  10. pull stations
  11. pull strings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pull someone's plumes (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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