Preen

/pɹiːn/ · noun

Meaning

A forked tool used by clothiers for dressing cloth..

Definitions by Sense

1. A forked tool used by clothiers for dressing cloth.
2. (dialectal) A pin.
3. (dialectal) A bodkin; brooch.
4. (transitive) To pin; fasten.
5. (of birds, ambitransitive) To groom; to trim or dress the feathers with the beak.
6. (of people, intransitive, reflexive) To spend time making oneself attractive and admiring one's appearance, e.g. in front of a mirror.
7. (intransitive) To show off, posture, or smarm.
8. (transitive) To flatter.

Example Sentences

She never seemed to want for siller; the house was as bright as a new preen, the yaird better delved than the manse garden; […]

Mr Kernan halted and preened himself before the sloping mirror of Peter Kennedy, hairdresser. Stylish coat, beyond a doubt. Scott of Dawson street. Well worth the half sovereign I gave Neary for it.

His preening self-satisfaction, chest thrown forward as he settles into a chair in his mansion...

Impressed by their looks and their dancing, but not their singing, Mr. Farian called them Milli Vanilli and recorded an album of lightweight, preening dance-pop under their name, using uncredited studio musicians.

He preened under her compliments.

The crowning tragedy—or sick joke—is that those who have postured and preened the most ostentatiously about their devotion to the Constitution have been the most indifferent to its destruction.

“Six look like dyin', and five dead,” preened the killer.

In Miller's view the play is expressive of a peculiarly Renaissance vision of the harmonious marriage within the orderly society: 'its spirit derives from Elizabethan Puritanism's view of the household as an orderly place in whichc the marriage is consecrated not in the church but in the orderly procedures of domesticity ; in which obedience is required , not in order to preen the male pride of the father, but to restore order in a fallen world '

Synonyms for preen

Antonyms for preen

Related Words

Word Forms

• preens
• prin
• preening
• preened

Usage Notes

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