pennage
nounEtymology From penna + -age, from Latin penna, pinna (“wing, feather”). Perhaps analogous to French pennage, the same Latinate root and suffix elements having both entered at an earlier stage (cf. Middle English penne, -age).
1
Obsolete feathery covering; plumage
- AND IN THIS REGARD eſpecially, namely for breeding after the ſummer Sunſteed, the Halcyones are of great name and much marked. The very ſeas, and they that ſaile thereupon, know well when they ſit and breed. This very bird ſo notable, is little bigger than a ſparrow: for the more part of her pennage, blew, intermingled yet among with white and purple feathers, having a thin ſmall neck and long withall.1601, C[aius] Plinius Secundus [i.e., Pliny the Elder], “[Book X.] CHAP. XXXII. Of the Halcyones, or Kings-fiſhers: and the daies good for navigation which they ſhew. Of the Sea-guls and Cormorants.”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Historie of the World. Commonly Called, The Naturall Historie of C. Plinius Secundus. […], 1st tome, London: […] Adam Islip, →OCLC, page 287: