smooth someone's feathers

English

Etymology

From the expression ruffle someone's feathers.

Verb

smooth someone's feathers (third-person singular simple present smooths someone's feathers, present participle smoothing someone's feathers, simple past and past participle smoothed someone's feathers)

1. To soothe (someone) who has had their feathers ruffled; to pacify (someone) who is upset.
   • 1882, William George Hamley, Traseaden Hall: "when George the Third was King", page 127:

     L'Estrange bowed and offered his arm, while Mr Millis smoothed his ruffled feathers, and went back to the other young men , — smoothed his feathers, because it would never have answered to let others see that Mr Millis had got the worst of an encounter of any kind.

   • 2007, Denise A. Bates, House of Bull, page 584:

     She's mad at me for letting you go; so you help me smooth her feathers tonight.

   • 2019, Gillian Gill, Virginia Woolf: And the Women Who Shaped Her World, page 192:

     Subsequently, Leslie's two wives smoothed his feathers, deferred to him, bolstered him, allowed him to “say exactly what he thought, however inconvenient, and do exactly what he liked” (page 110).