feather vs tassel

feather

verb
  • To adorn, as if with feathers; to fringe. 

  • To cover or furnish with feathers; (when of an arrow) to fletch. 

  • To intergrade or blend the pixels of an image with those of a background or neighboring image. 

  • To render light as a feather; to give wings to. 

  • To rotate the oars while they are out of the water to reduce wind resistance. 

  • To arrange in the manner or appearance of feathers. 

  • Of written or printed ink: to take on a blurry appearance as a result of spreading through the receiving medium. 

  • To enrich; to exalt; to benefit. 

  • To streamline the blades of an aircraft's propeller by rotating them perpendicular to the axis of the propeller when the engine is shut down so that the propeller does not windmill during flight. 

  • To touch lightly, like (or as if with) a feather. 

  • To finely shave or bevel an edge. 

  • To tread, as a cockerel. 

  • To move the cue back and forth along the bridge in preparation for striking the cue ball. 

  • To accidentally touch the cue ball with the tip of the cue when taking aim. 

  • To move softly, like a feather. 

noun
  • A junction indicator attached to a colour-light signal at an angle, which lights up, typically with four white lights in a row, when a diverging route is set up. 

  • One of the two shims of the three-piece stone-splitting tool known as plug and feather or plug and feathers; the feathers are placed in a borehole and then a wedge is driven between them, causing the stone to split. 

  • Partridges and pheasants, as opposed to rabbits and hares (called fur). 

  • One of the fins or wings on the shaft of an arrow. 

  • A longitudinal strip projecting from an object to strengthen it, or to enter a channel in another object and thereby prevent displacement sideways but permit motion lengthwise; a spline. 

  • Anything petty or trifling; a whit or jot. 

  • The angular adjustment of an oar or paddle-wheel float, with reference to a horizontal axis, as it leaves or enters the water. 

  • Kind; nature; species (from the proverbial phrase "birds of a feather"). 

  • A branching, hair-like structure that grows on the bodies of birds, used for flight, swimming, protection and display. 

  • Long hair on the lower legs of a dog or horse, especially a draft horse, notably the Clydesdale breed. Narrowly only the rear hair. 

tassel

verb
  • To adorn with tassels. 

  • To put forth a tassel or flower. 

noun
  • A kind of bur used in dressing cloth; a teasel. 

  • A ball-shaped bunch of plaited or otherwise entangled threads from which at one end protrudes a cord on which the ball is hung, and which may have loose, dangling threads at the other end (often used as decoration along the bottom of garments, curtains or other hangings). 

  • A thin plate of gold on the back of a bishop's gloves. 

  • A narrow silk ribbon, or similar, sewed to a book to be put between the pages. 

  • The panicle on a male plant of maize, which consists of loose threads with anthers on them. 

  • The loose hairs at the end of a braid. 

  • A piece of board that is laid upon a wall as a sort of plate, to give a level surface to the ends of floor timbers. 

How often have the words feather and tassel occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )