a. a. Having feet covered with feathers. b. fig. Moving silently and swiftly.
a. 1580. Hollyband, Treas. Fr. Tong., Coulon, or pigeon Pattu, fether-footed doues or pigeons.
1868. Darwin, Anim. & Pl., I. viii. 295. There is a feather-footed breed [of canary].
b. 1565. Golding, Ovid’s Met., II. 31.
| He had the fetherfooted howres go harnesse in his horse. | |
| The Goddesses with might and mayne themselves therto enforce. |
1637. Heywood, Dial., Earth and Age, iii. Wks. 1874, VI. 137.
| Swift feather-footed TIME and ravenous AGE | |
| Devour all things in their remorselesse rage. |
1731. A. Hill, Adv. Poets, xxiii.
| Fancy’s light Dwarfs! whose feather-footed Strains, | |
| Dance, in wild Windings, through a Waste of Brains! |
1797. Mrs. A. M. Bennett, Beggar Girl (1813), II. 110. To follow the feather-footed Rosa as she darted along the paddock in sight of the chamber-window.
1839. Bailey, Festus, xx. (1848), 231. Soft as a featherfooted cloud on Heaven.
