plucked; plucking; plucks
1
: to pull or pick off or out
2
3
: to move, remove, or separate forcibly or abruptly
plucked the child from the middle of the street
4
a
: to pick, pull, or grasp at
b
: to play by sounding the strings with the fingers or a pick
: to make a sharp pull or twitch
plucker
noun
1
: an act or instance of plucking or pulling
2
: the heart, liver, lungs, and trachea of a slaughtered animal especially as an item of food
3
: courageous readiness to fight or continue against odds : dogged resolution
Synonyms
Examples of pluck in a Sentence
Verb
My sister plucked a white hair from my head.
The hunter plucked the bird's feathers.
plucking petals off a flower
Firefighters plucked the child from the top floor of the burning building.
He'd been plucked from obscurity and thrust into the national spotlight.
a cat that was plucked off the city's streets last winter
He plucked a stone out of the river.
Noun
It takes pluck to do what she did.
She showed pluck in getting up on stage.
Recent Examples on the Web
Tj MacIas, Kansas City Star, 8 Apr. 2024
Fans in the audience (usually dancing on the floor) are hand plucked by Swift's team.
—Bryan West, USA TODAY, 3 Apr. 2024
Hometown beauty queen Barbara Parker is plucked from obscurity and rebranded as Sophie Straw, the star of the BBC’s latest hit comedy.
—Mia Barzilay Freund, Vogue, 29 Mar. 2024
Tua Tagovailoa, Mike White and Skylar Thompson. What could be added: An undrafted player – or potentially someone in the sixth or seventh rounds - could be plucked to compete with Thompson for the No. 3 job.
—Barry Jackson, Miami Herald, 25 Mar. 2024
Chicago Cubs The Cubs plucked manager Craig Counsell away from division rivals Milwaukee in hopes of returning to the playoffs for the first time since 2020 and brought star outfielder Cody Bellinger back.
—Danny Emerman, The Mercury News, 24 Mar. 2024
As orders come in online, the Kuka robot plucks food items off a holding tray, places them in an oven, and passes them onto its human coworker on the assembly line.
—Sasha Rogelberg, Fortune, 22 Mar. 2024
Traffic surges, straying from trails, plucking flowers, and tampering of any sort can greatly impact that increasingly fragile dynamic.
—Krista Simmons and J.d. Simkins, Sunset Magazine, 8 Mar. 2024
Driving it, there’s no rearward visibility, thanks to the snorkel plucked from the STO, so reversing requires camera reliance and a prayer.
—Sean Evans, Robb Report, 1 Apr. 2024
Kyle Melnick, Washington Post, 18 Dec. 2023
Yet the myth has endured and Perry’s successor, Greg Abbott, has not only picked up that break-away pluck in recent weeks, he’s escalated it to the point of belligerence.
—TIME, 1 Feb. 2024
Jacob-Perkins cut razor-sharp lines with her cello over scrubby brushstrokes of strings, hard plucks of harp and tensely bowed xylophone bars.
—Michael Andor Brodeur, Washington Post, 11 Jan. 2024
Backed by only a bassline and the live finger plucks of violin strings, Sada starts out unusually timid.
—Pitchfork, 11 Dec. 2023
The pluck creates a wave pulse that travels down the rubber band and reflects off the ends, where your fingers are.
—Rhett Allain, WIRED, 15 Dec. 2023
In the short prelude, light yet pungent pizzicato plucks — amid brooding low strings and an elegiac solo violin — movingly evoke Jesus’s mother’s tears without feeling too obvious.
—Zachary Woolfe, New York Times, 23 Nov. 2023
Silkroad’s take makes every texture tangible and immediate, the voices of Giddens and violinist Mazz Swift trading off within a swirl of textures — the pluck of Wu Man’s pipa, the grain of Kojiro Umezaki’s shakuhachi flute, the timbral chorus of Haruka Fujii’s marimba, caxixi and djembe.
—Michael Andor Brodeur, Washington Post, 3 Nov. 2023
The film is drawn from the first part of Journey to the West, detailing the origin story of the title character, a powerful creature hatched out of a magical rock (voiced with lots of pluck by comedian Jimmy O. Yang).
—David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 15 Aug. 2023
Verb
Thanks to the quick thinking of a good Samaritan and the Isanti County Sheriff’s Office, a black bear cub was plucked up and rescued from wandering into traffic on Highway 65 in Stanchfield, according to a Facebook post by the sheriff’s office.
—Tj MacIas, Kansas City Star, 8 Apr. 2024
Fans in the audience (usually dancing on the floor) are hand plucked by Swift's team.
—Bryan West, USA TODAY, 3 Apr. 2024
Hometown beauty queen Barbara Parker is plucked from obscurity and rebranded as Sophie Straw, the star of the BBC’s latest hit comedy.
—Mia Barzilay Freund, Vogue, 29 Mar. 2024
Tua Tagovailoa, Mike White and Skylar Thompson. What could be added: An undrafted player – or potentially someone in the sixth or seventh rounds - could be plucked to compete with Thompson for the No. 3 job.
—Barry Jackson, Miami Herald, 25 Mar. 2024
Chicago Cubs The Cubs plucked manager Craig Counsell away from division rivals Milwaukee in hopes of returning to the playoffs for the first time since 2020 and brought star outfielder Cody Bellinger back.
—Danny Emerman, The Mercury News, 24 Mar. 2024
As orders come in online, the Kuka robot plucks food items off a holding tray, places them in an oven, and passes them onto its human coworker on the assembly line.
—Sasha Rogelberg, Fortune, 22 Mar. 2024
Traffic surges, straying from trails, plucking flowers, and tampering of any sort can greatly impact that increasingly fragile dynamic.
—Krista Simmons and J.d. Simkins, Sunset Magazine, 8 Mar. 2024
Driving it, there’s no rearward visibility, thanks to the snorkel plucked from the STO, so reversing requires camera reliance and a prayer.
—Sean Evans, Robb Report, 1 Apr. 2024
Noun
The song begins slowly as the violinist, cellist and pianist pluck strings from their instruments to create a sense of uncertainty.
—Kyle Melnick, Washington Post, 18 Dec. 2023
Yet the myth has endured and Perry’s successor, Greg Abbott, has not only picked up that break-away pluck in recent weeks, he’s escalated it to the point of belligerence.
—TIME, 1 Feb. 2024
Jacob-Perkins cut razor-sharp lines with her cello over scrubby brushstrokes of strings, hard plucks of harp and tensely bowed xylophone bars.
—Michael Andor Brodeur, Washington Post, 11 Jan. 2024
Backed by only a bassline and the live finger plucks of violin strings, Sada starts out unusually timid.
—Pitchfork, 11 Dec. 2023
The pluck creates a wave pulse that travels down the rubber band and reflects off the ends, where your fingers are.
—Rhett Allain, WIRED, 15 Dec. 2023
In the short prelude, light yet pungent pizzicato plucks — amid brooding low strings and an elegiac solo violin — movingly evoke Jesus’s mother’s tears without feeling too obvious.
—Zachary Woolfe, New York Times, 23 Nov. 2023
Silkroad’s take makes every texture tangible and immediate, the voices of Giddens and violinist Mazz Swift trading off within a swirl of textures — the pluck of Wu Man’s pipa, the grain of Kojiro Umezaki’s shakuhachi flute, the timbral chorus of Haruka Fujii’s marimba, caxixi and djembe.
—Michael Andor Brodeur, Washington Post, 3 Nov. 2023
The film is drawn from the first part of Journey to the West, detailing the origin story of the title character, a powerful creature hatched out of a magical rock (voiced with lots of pluck by comedian Jimmy O. Yang).
—David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 15 Aug. 2023
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pluck.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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Dictionary Entries Near pluck
Cite this Entry
“Pluck.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pluck. Accessed 16 Apr. 2024.
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