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
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
Nick Kosmider, New York Times, 22 May 2025
Women dominate the lower tiers of tea labor, from plucking to packaging and remain vastly underrepresented in management, ownership, or policy influence.
—Dianne Plummer, Forbes.com, 21 May 2025
Randy Myers, Mercury News, 22 May 2025
In Spanish, my grandmother read tales from Las Mil y Una Noches—in English, The Thousand and One Nights—bringing the world beyond Leigh Street, Scheherazade's magical world of Central Asian pluck, heroism and ingenuity, into the life of my mother and her siblings.
—Josh Hammer, MSNBC Newsweek, 9 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for pluck
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Verb
The defending champion Philadelphia Eagles have drawn the blueprint on perpetually pouring resources into the front seven on defense, consistently plucking players from SEC schools and throwing them onto an assembly line of quarterback mashers.
—Nick Kosmider, New York Times, 22 May 2025
Women dominate the lower tiers of tea labor, from plucking to packaging and remain vastly underrepresented in management, ownership, or policy influence.
—Dianne Plummer, Forbes.com, 21 May 2025
Noun
Camille Rutherford brings the right amount of pluck and uncertainty as the perpetually single Parisian bookseller Agathe, a lover of books and words.
—Randy Myers, Mercury News, 22 May 2025
In Spanish, my grandmother read tales from Las Mil y Una Noches—in English, The Thousand and One Nights—bringing the world beyond Leigh Street, Scheherazade's magical world of Central Asian pluck, heroism and ingenuity, into the life of my mother and her siblings.
—Josh Hammer, MSNBC Newsweek, 9 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for pluck
Cite this Entry
“Pluck.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pluck. Accessed 4 Jun. 2025.
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