Meaning
To display cowardice; to give way to fear where courage is expected, especially in a public test of nerve. Now rather dated and heard mainly in British English, surviving in historical writing and self-deprecating jokes about backing out of a challenge. Old-fashioned and mildly literary in tone; the underlying accusation of cowardice is strong, so the phrase is usually softened with irony. Regional use: British English chiefly.
Origin
The image comes from cockfighting, and this derivation is not folklore but early lexicography: the OED's first evidence is Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785), which glosses 'he has a white feather' as meaning he is a coward, an allusion to a game cock, since a white feather was proof that the bird was not of the true game breed. The OED records the verbal phrase 'to mount (also show) the white feather', to surrender in a cowardly way, with citations including Walter Scott's Journal in 1829, observing that nobody will defend a man who shows the white feather, and notes the explicit allusion to the game bird's tail feather as a mark of inferior breeding. The symbol gained new force in the First World War, when women presented white feathers to men out of uniform to shame them into enlisting. The cowardice sense therefore rests on the gamecock's plumage, documented from the first citation onward.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- display the white feather
- get the white feather
- mount the white feather
- show a white feather
Usage Examples
- Accused of showing the white feather, the foreman climbed the mast after all and fixed the antenna himself.
- However tempting it was to show the white feather, the trustees voted to keep the village shop open through the winter.
- He feared that withdrawing from the debate would be read as a white feather, so he stayed and argued his case.