What's the difference between feather and preen?

Feather


Definition:

  • (n.) One of the peculiar dermal appendages, of several kinds, belonging to birds, as contour feathers, quills, and down.
  • (n.) Kind; nature; species; -- from the proverbial phrase, "Birds of a feather," that is, of the same species.
  • (n.) The fringe of long hair on the legs of the setter and some other dogs.
  • (n.) A tuft of peculiar, long, frizzly hair on a horse.
  • (n.) One of the fins or wings on the shaft of an arrow.
  • (n.) A longitudinal strip projecting as a fin from an object, to strengthen it, or to enter a channel in another object and thereby prevent displacement sidwise but permit motion lengthwise; a spline.
  • (n.) A thin wedge driven between the two semicylindrical parts of a divided plug in a hole bored in a stone, to rend the stone.
  • (n.) The angular adjustment of an oar or paddle-wheel float, with reference to a horizontal axis, as it leaves or enters the water.
  • (v. t.) To furnish with a feather or feathers, as an arrow or a cap.
  • (v. t.) To adorn, as with feathers; to fringe.
  • (v. t.) To render light as a feather; to give wings to.
  • (v. t.) To enrich; to exalt; to benefit.
  • (v. t.) To tread, as a cock.
  • (v. i.) To grow or form feathers; to become feathered; -- often with out; as, the birds are feathering out.
  • (v. i.) To curdle when poured into another liquid, and float about in little flakes or "feathers;" as, the cream feathers
  • (v. i.) To turn to a horizontal plane; -- said of oars.
  • (v. i.) To have the appearance of a feather or of feathers; to be or to appear in feathery form.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) These studies indicate that at each site of induction during feather morphogenesis, a general pattern is repeated in which an epithelial structure linked by L-CAM is confronted with periodically propagating condensations of cells linked by N-CAM.
  • (2) Sexually mature males have long, 'feathered' tails as compared with females.
  • (3) HVT-specific immunofluorescent antigen was detected in the feather follicle epithelium (FFE) and in the surface layer of the skin epidermis.
  • (4) This is a team who have found their feet after that winless group section, a side who have already seen off the much admired Croatia and who can ruffle the feathers of the hosts or the reigning world champions.
  • (5) The most consistently sensational evidence from Icac has been around former Labor member Eddie Obeid and the influence he wielded in the NSW Labor government to feather his own nest.
  • (6) However, feather loss (in one test) was associated with escape and avoidance behavior of groups; stepwise increases in fearfulness with increasing group size were associated with similar increases in loss of feathers.
  • (7) It may be just as well that Hugh Grant fervently believes a film succeeds on its qualities, not on publicity about its stars, because he did his tabloid reputation as a heartless, feather-brained Lothario immense harm in the process of delivering damning testimony on phone-hacking to the Leveson inquiry on Monday.
  • (8) If that effect existed in small animals, they would lose less heat if nude than if fur or feathers were present.
  • (9) Daily subcutaneous injection of L-dopa for 4 weeks into 2-year-old low egg production hens resulted in a lightening of feather color to snow white and increased oviduct and ovary weights and the development of well developed follicles.
  • (10) Hatched chicks were small and had pale feathers, skin, skeletal muscles, bone marrow, and viscera.
  • (11) During feather follicle formation, N-CAM was expressed in the dermal papilla and was closely apposed to the L-CAM-positive papillar ectoderm, while the dermal papilla showed no evidence of laminin or fibronectin.
  • (12) One hundred forty-two allergic children aged three to 18 years were studied for evaluation of the usefulness of skin testing with influenza vaccine as a means of identifying those children who could be immunized safely despite their allergies to chickens, eggs, or feathers.
  • (13) The Glasman "project" will undoubtedly ruffle feathers inside and outside Labour.
  • (14) Successful colonization and invasion of experimentally inoculated feathers required addition of moisture and elevation of relative humidity within the cultures.
  • (15) Injections of ovine prolactin during the pause-inducing procedure significantly reduced the subsequent rate of loss of primary wing feathers, suggesting that in certain physiological states, PRL may function to suppress molting.
  • (16) The endogenous virus, ev6, markedly reduced recovery of the endogenous virus (EV21) from plasmas of slow-feathering chickens.
  • (17) The very first collection we worked on together was called The Birds, and when he got the Givenchy job and we went to Paris, and he got to see what the Givenchy ateliers could do with feathers, he was just blown away.” The photographer Anne Deniau, who took many portraits of McQueen and whose camera was from 1997 to 2010 the only one allowed backstage at McQueen shows, felt that he loved “the lightness, the delicacy, of feathers.
  • (18) Retinal pigmented epithelium of White Leghorn chick embryos did not give rise to pigmentation of feather primordia in the hosts.
  • (19) The type of curve described by a feather is characteristic of its tensile properties and its degree of softness.
  • (20) Total amino acid flow to the duodenum was 19.3 and 15.6% higher for cows fed the feather meal and combined meal diets, respectively, compared with the soybean meal diet.

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 .