What's the difference between bodkin and preen?

Bodkin


Definition:

  • (n.) A dagger.
  • (n.) An implement of steel, bone, ivory, etc., with a sharp point, for making holes by piercing; a /tiletto; an eyeleteer.
  • (n.) A sharp tool, like an awl, used for picking /ut letters from a column or page in making corrections.
  • (n.) A kind of needle with a large eye and a blunt point, for drawing tape, ribbon, etc., through a loop or a hem; a tape needle.
  • (n.) A kind of pin used by women to fasten the hair.
  • (n.) See Baudekin.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) A sign which appears to be almost specific for encasement, the bullet and bodkin configuration, is described here.

Preen


Definition:

  • (n.) A forked tool used by clothiers in dressing cloth.
  • (n.) To dress with, or as with, a preen; to trim or dress with the beak, as the feathers; -- said of birds.
  • (n.) To trim up, as trees.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "Anne Hathaway at least tried to sing and dance and preen along to the goings on, but Franco seemed distant, uninterested and content to keep his Cheshire-cat-meets-smug smile on display throughout."
  • (2) His running here was unstinting and he doubled his tally with a clinical finish after a first touch too smart for Pogatetz, preening perhaps after giving Boro a sniff of reprieve.
  • (3) Having started out preening (he tells a former colleague that he lives "the life of Riley"), he ends up howling alone on a small rock, the decision to adorn himself with a beautiful young wife having stolen his stature, robbed him of his dignity.
  • (4) What's more, his genial stiffness and shy self-awareness give him a kind of awkward dignity compared to the preening smugness of Cruz.
  • (5) He remembers Obama's incoming cabinet posing for portraits in the White House during the height of the crisis: “what a weird and preening thing for us to do while the world is burning”.
  • (6) 'Jonathan Saunders, Preen, Berardi, Kane and JW Anderson are on fire' Those are the names you will be raving about now.
  • (7) Romney's event is being organised by Scott Preen, a London company that specialises in high-profile political fundraising parties.
  • (8) If the Packham show emphasised a disconnect between the fashion industry's quest for trends and pure red carpet dressing, then the Preen show later in the day underlined how a move to the US can give a British label a healthy dollop of slickness.
  • (9) At best, these corporate-dominated panels are mostly useless: preening sessions in which chief executives exercise messiah complexes.
  • (10) Total lipid was extracted from chicken (Gallus domesticus) epidermis, leg scale, claws, feathers and preen glands and analyzed by quantitative thin-layer chromatography.
  • (11) Comparatively higher activity was observed in the extent of ambulation and rearing at 5 weeks old, rearing and preening at 7 weeks old, and preening and defecation at 11 weeks old in the Sprague-Dawley rats compared with the Wistar rats.
  • (12) In his preening, know-it-all professional arrogance, Cruise thinks he's bulletproof, but the mouse roars, and the hitman pays (incidentally, when casting a soullessly efficient, emotionally unavailable professional, could there be a more perfect candidate than Cruise?).
  • (13) The animals showed depressed response of preening on day 2 and 6.
  • (14) In 1909, the American illustrator Rose O’Neill drew a comic strip about “kewpies” (taken from cupid) – preening babylike creatures with tiny wings and huge heads, which were handed out as carnival prizes and capered around Jell-O ads (to this day, Kewpie Mayonnaise, introduced in 1925, is the top-selling brand in Japan).
  • (15) Trichobilharzia ocellata cercariae attach readily to the foot skin of their duck host, but poorly to preen-gland contents.
  • (16) Jane, a journalist in her 40s, thinks so: "I won't stay long in the weights room," she says: "The men are preening themselves.
  • (17) In the short-term, times spent feeding, drinking and preening decreased.
  • (18) Daily decrease was observed in ambulation, rearing and preening responses, with maximum decrement on the seventh day of Dimecron intoxication.
  • (19) From day 9, the preening response exhibited a continuous increasing pattern until the last day of the experiment.
  • (20) Power is meaningless unless it’s displayed, enacted: hence Vladimir Putin’s bare-chested preening or his sessions of bone-crushing judo .