smooth someone's feathers

present singular third person smooths someone's feathers · participle present smoothing someone's feathers · participle past smoothed someone's feathers · past smoothed someone's feathers

1. To soothe (someone) who has had their feathers ruffled; to pacify (someone) who is upset.

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

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

   2 more examples

   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.

   1882, William George Hamley, Traseaden Hall: "when George the Third was King", page 127

   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).

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