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
Justin Davidson, Vulture, 13 May 2025
Companies are still developing mining vehicles, but one method would be to use large tractor-sized machines that drive across the sea floor plucking up nodules and transporting them via long pipes to a ship on the surface.
—Laura Paddison, CNN Money, 8 May 2025
Josh Hammer, MSNBC Newsweek, 9 May 2025
Yes, Republicans have been getting an earful from their districts, but those skirmishes are going to look perfectly benign compared to what a vindictive Trump could unleash for lawmakers who show too much pluck.
—Philip Elliott, TIME, 25 Feb. 2025
See All Example Sentences for pluck
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Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
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Verb
Adams plucked out Shakespeare’s lines and mounted them like gems in a finely wrought score.
—Justin Davidson, Vulture, 13 May 2025
Companies are still developing mining vehicles, but one method would be to use large tractor-sized machines that drive across the sea floor plucking up nodules and transporting them via long pipes to a ship on the surface.
—Laura Paddison, CNN Money, 8 May 2025
Noun
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
Yes, Republicans have been getting an earful from their districts, but those skirmishes are going to look perfectly benign compared to what a vindictive Trump could unleash for lawmakers who show too much pluck.
—Philip Elliott, TIME, 25 Feb. 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 20 May. 2025.
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