[priːn], (Verb)

Definitions:
- (of a bird) tidy and clean its feathers with its beak
(e.g: reed buntings preened at the pool's edge)


Phrases:

Origin:
late Middle English: apparently a variant of obsolete prune (based on Latin ungere ‘anoint’), in the same sense, associated with Scots and northern English dialect preen ‘pierce, pin’ (because of the ‘pricking’ action of the bird's beak)