Emily Dickinson Lexicon

FEATH'ER, or FETH'ER, v.t.

1. To dress in feathers; to fit with feathers, or to cover with feathers.
2. To tread as a cock. Dryden.
3. To enrich; to adorn; to exalt. The king cared not to plume his nobility and people, to feather himself. Bacon. To feather one's nest, to collect wealth, particularly from emoluments derived from agencies for others; a proverb taken from birds which collect feathers for their nests.