As I understand, 'feather' means lightly brushed over. Like the blade of an oar passing over the water, tilted by the rower to avoid dragging on the 'out' stroke.
'Feathering the prop'. Used where the propeller-blades of a variable-pitch propeller can be turned so as not to produce any propulsion for the aircraft. Feather-board fencing. A fence having boards that over-lap - like birds feathers. They are tapered in profile so that the thick edge of one board overlaps the thin edge of the previous one. I hope this gives some idea to this thread. Like David - I'm all ears! Ron (UK) -----Original Message----- From: David Rastall [mailto:dlu...@verizon.net] Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 9:57 PM To: dem...@suffolk.lib.ny.us Cc: lute Subject: [LUTE] Re: French trill? On Jan 28, 2009, at 4:19 PM, <dem...@suffolk.lib.ny.us> wrote: > On Wed, Jan 28, 2009, Jean-Marie Poirier <jmpoiri...@wanadoo.fr> said: > >> I believe "feather" is a technical term in rowing and in this case >> would mean something like "dig". But I may be totally wrong of >> course ;-) ! > > rather the opposite, one feathers an oar by twisting the wrists > during the > recovery stroke making the blade parallel to the water so it wont > dig in. So, erm...what's that got to do with Baroque ornamentation? David Taylor's expression "feathering them in," referring to certain kinds of ornaments, is a bit vague, but might have the connotation of touching the music very lightly with the ornaments. At least, "touching something very lightly" is one definition I read for "feathering" as a verb. Only DT knows for sure... David R dlu...@verizon.net -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
