PLUCK
What does "PLUCK" mean?
To pull or pick something quickly, or spirited courage in the face of difficulty.
Meanings
- To pull or pick something with a sharp tug. She plucked a ripe plum from the branch.
- To sound the string of an instrument by pulling and releasing it. He plucked a soft melody on the harp.
- To remove feathers from a bird before cooking. They plucked the chicken before roasting it.
- Spirited and determined courage. It took real pluck to stand up and speak. informal
Did you know?
- When we praise someone's 'pluck', we are unknowingly calling them gutsy in the most literal way: the courage sense grew from the butcher's 'pluck' - the heart, liver and lungs pulled from a carcass.
Word origin
From Old English 'pluccian', to pull or tear off; the 'courage' sense arose in 19th-century slang from the butcher's 'pluck' (heart, liver and lungs), the organs seen as the seat of nerve.
Remember it
PLUCK starts like PULL with the U pulled forward - you pluck by pulling, whether a string, a feather, or your nerve.
A little poem
One quick tug-the apple, the harp string, the breath-
and courage, too, is something you must pull
free of the safe branch holding it, like death.
tercet
Wordplay
- The nervous harpist finally found his courage - turns out he just had to pluck up.
What it teaches
Courage and harvest share a verb for a reason: both mean reaching out and taking what won't fall on its own.
Quick facts
What does PLUCK mean?
To pull or pick something quickly, or spirited courage in the face of difficulty.
Is PLUCK a valid word?
Yes — PLUCK is one of the answer words in Wordul, the daily word game.
How many letters is PLUCK?
PLUCK has 5 letters and 1 syllable.
Where does PLUCK come from?
From Old English 'pluccian', to pull or tear off; the 'courage' sense arose in 19th-century slang from the butcher's 'pluck' (heart, liver and lungs), the organs seen as the seat of nerve.
What can PLUCK teach us?
Courage and harvest share a verb for a reason: both mean reaching out and taking what won't fall on its own.
How players do
Be the first to solve it.