Other forms: plucked, plucking, plucks
To pluck is to pull and release a single string. Pluck the strings, plucked rather than bowed, a plucked note.
Pizzicato is the musical instruction for plucking a bowed instrument, and the harp, guitar and harpsichord are plucked by design. Elsewhere, to pluck is to pull something out sharply: pluck a hair, pluck a chicken, plucked from the crowd. As a noun, pluck means courage: she showed real pluck. Note plucky, which is affectionate and slightly condescending, and is used mostly of underdogs.
1verbpluckTo pull and release a single string.
“She plucked the strings of the harp gently.”
2nouncourageCourage.
“It took real pluck to say it in front of nine people.”
pluck is a sharp pull, or courage.
Old English pluccian is Germanic and probably from a Latin verb meaning to pull out feathers. Plucking a bird and plucking a string are the same sharp pull applied to different things.
Proto-Germanic
*plukkōną
Proto-West Germanic
*plukkōn
Old English
pluccian
Middle English
plucken
English, today
pluck
Built from
From Middle English plucken, plukken, plockien, from Old English pluccian, ploccian (“to pluck, pull away, tear”), also Old English plyċċan "to pluck, pull, snatch; pluck with desire", from Proto-West Germanic plukkōn, from Proto-Germanic plukkōną, plukkijaną (“to pluck”), of uncertain and disputed origin. Perhaps related to Old English pullian (“to pull, draw; pluck off; snatch”). Cognate with stq plukje (“to pluck”), West Frisian plôkje (“to pick, pluck”), Dutch plukken (“to pluck”), li plógte (“to pluck”), Low German plukken (“to pluck”), German pflücken (“to pluck, pick”), Danish - and Norwegian plukke (“to pick”), Swedish plocka (“to pick, pluck, cull”), Icelandic plokka, plukka (“to pluck, pull”). More at pull. An alternative etymology suggests Proto-Germanic plukkōną, plukkijaną may have been borrowed from an assumed Vulgar Latin pilucico, a derivative of Latin pilo (“deprive of hair, make bald, depilate”), from pilus (“hair”). The Oxford English Dictionary, however, finds difficulties with this and cites gaps in historical evidence.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Music & Instruments