What's the difference between plume and preen?

Plume


Definition:

  • (v.) A feather; esp., a soft, downy feather, or a long, conspicuous, or handsome feather.
  • (v.) An ornamental tuft of feathers.
  • (v.) A feather, or group of feathers, worn as an ornament; a waving ornament of hair, or other material resembling feathers.
  • (v.) A token of honor or prowess; that on which one prides himself; a prize or reward.
  • (v.) A large and flexible panicle of inflorescence resembling a feather, such as is seen in certain large ornamental grasses.
  • (v. t.) To pick and adjust the plumes or feathers of; to dress or prink.
  • (v. t.) To strip of feathers; to pluck; to strip; to pillage; also, to peel.
  • (v. t.) To adorn with feathers or plumes.
  • (v. t.) To pride; to vaunt; to boast; -- used reflexively; as, he plumes himself on his skill.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In the 19th century, Newtown Creek was a centre for oil refining and other industries, which left behind a massive oil plume.
  • (2) On computer screens, the plume showed up as a patch of sky where levels of ash were above 200 micrograms per cubic metre.
  • (3) Using field observations, modelling techniques and theoretical analysis, parameters describing the performance and collection efficiency of large industrial canopy fume hoods are established for, a) steady state collection of fume and b) collection of plumes with fluctuating flowrates.
  • (4) Papillomavirus DNA has been reported recently in the vapor (smoke plume) derived from warts treated with carbon dioxide laser; this raises concerns for operator safety.
  • (5) The footage beamed back from the liberated districts of Ramadi is grim: a ghost town littered with debris and smashed concrete, destroyed storefronts, plumes of smoke, the sound of gunfire piercing the air as Iraqi soldiers speak on camera.
  • (6) Polar conductivity data substantiate the fact that small air ions of one polarity in the plume are elevated while those of opposite polarity are suppressed compared to background concentrations found in the rural environment.
  • (7) The soundtrack is supplied by vinyl rotating on vintage record players, a gumball machine dispenses yellow, black and white gobstoppers, and the room is surveilled by the beady eyes of esoteric taxidermy that includes a peacock in full plume and a splendid Himalayan wild goat grazing among the soft seating.
  • (8) These "plume cells" are about 30-40 microns long and have an extremely irregular nucleus in their expanded terminus.
  • (9) Plumes of smoke rose above Kathmandu as friends, relatives and others gathered by the river to quickly cremate their loved ones’ remains.
  • (10) The fire also burned two vehicles and a US Forest Service garage and sent an enormous ashy plume over the mountains.
  • (11) Using satellite imagery, researchers could map the areas of coral covered by plumes of sediment released by the dredging process.
  • (12) The results allow the following changes in the germ counts in the plume of a wet cooling tower to be expected: 1.
  • (13) May 31, 2017 Images posted on social media showed a huge plume of smoke in the sky.
  • (14) A large plume of smoke rises from what is said to be Baiji oil refinery in Baiji, northern Iraq.
  • (15) It released a video of a vehicle driving away down a road, followed later by a plume of smoke rising in the distance.
  • (16) The city, one of the largest Kurdish bastions of resistance to Isis in northern Syria, was shaken by heavy shelling from the advancing militants at dusk on Friday, sending plumes of smoke skywards and more refugees scrambling across the border into Turkey .
  • (17) This surplus was interpreted as due to dry deposition from the plume, and deposition velocities were estimated at 0.02-0.10 m s-1.
  • (18) For Cohn, a teddy boy at heart, neither came close to the glamour and speed fix of the rapidly receding “golden age” he wrote about with such dash: Elvis’s “great ducktail plume and lopsided grin”, Phil Spector’s “beautiful noise”, and James Brown, “the outlaw, the Stagger Lee of his time”.
  • (19) We have calculated washout factors for locations where there are data on deposition, rainfall and air concentrations during the passage of the Chernobyl plume.
  • (20) were detected in one-third of the samples and low numbers of Campylobacter jejuni were found in the sewage and plume.

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 .