a. [UN-1 9. Cf. OE. unʓefeðered, MDu. ongevedert, G. ungefiedert, † -federt, older Da. ufedret, Sw. ofjädrad.]
1. Not provided or covered with feathers: a. Of birds, etc.
1570. Levins, Manip., 50. Vnfethered, implumis.
1605. A. Willet, Hexapla Gen., Ded. I … haue brought forth my implumed and vnfeathered birds.
1653. Jer. Taylor, Serm. for Year, I. Ep. Ded. They are like callow and unfeathered birds.
1697. Dryden, Virg. Georg., IV. 745. Whose Nest some prying Churl had found, and thence, By Stealth, convey’d th’unfeather’d Innocence.
1780. Cowper, Sparrows in Trin. Coll., 14. In hope of crumbs, Which kindly giv’n, may serve with food Convenient their unfeather’d brood.
1826. S. Cooper, First Lines Surg. (ed. 5), 83. A roughness which is compared to the skin of an unfeathered goose.
1884. Coues, N. Amer. Birds, 86. Feathered Tracts and Unfeathered Spaces.
b. Applied generically to man.
c. 1600. Timon, V. iv. (1812), 86. A peripatetick is a two legd liuing creature, gressible, unfeathered.
1681. Dryden, Abs. & Achit., I. 170. And all to leaue what with his Toil he won To that unfeather’d two-legg’d thing, a Son.
1754. Warburton, Bolingbroke’s Philos., i. 36. Ribaldry and ill language disgrace the animal implume bipes, the two-leg’d unfeathered Philosopher.
1817. Bentham, Parl. Reform, Introd. 213. The speeches of so many unfeathered bipeds.
1895. Atlantic Monthly, LXXVI. 141/2. Such tastes … have been known among the unfeathered tribes.
2. Of arrows: Not fitted with feathers.
1611. Cotgr., Materas desempenné,… an vnfeathered quarrell.
1790. Cook’s Voy., I. 75. But … kneeling down, [he] shot an arrow, unfeathered (as they all are), near the sixth part of a mile.
1837. Lytton, Athens, II. 122. Lycians with mantles of goat skin and unfeathered arrows of reed.
1860. Maury, Phys. Geog. (Low), iv. 103. The unfeathered arrows represent winds.
