Deplumation
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The stripping or falling off of plumes or feathers. uncountable
"[…] through the violence of her moulting, or deplumation, she comes into this earthly body deprived of that blessed life which she before enjoyed."
- 2 Loss of the eyelashes due to disease of the eyelids. uncountable
"Systemic symptoms include headache, anorexia and sometimes nausea, vomiting, tinnitus and deafness, and deplumation or bleaching of the hair may occur."
- 3 The stripping of someone's symbol(s) of status and prestige; humiliation. figuratively, uncountable
"If any person wishes to see one of the most neat, elegant, and at the same time thorough cases of deplumation, any where to be found in literary history, in which an individual who strutted on to the stage as a peacock, was soon obliged to leave it as a dove, he has only to read Dr. Beck's articles in "The Literary World," in which the fabricated quotation of Mr. Webster, and Professor Felton's defence of it, are shown to be exceedingly bad as Latin, and much worse as logic."
Example
More examples"[…] through the violence of her moulting, or deplumation, she comes into this earthly body deprived of that blessed life which she before enjoyed."
Etymology
See deplume.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.