Herl

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A single filament or barb branching from the shaft of a feather, often taken from a peacock or pheasant for use in fly tying
2. The fine fibrous strand that grows from a feather's quill, prized by anglers who wind it onto artificial flies
3. One of the delicate side fibers of a plume, commonly harvested from birds such as peacocks to dress trout flies

Etymology: The fibres that make up a feather's vane, the thin barbs that give it substance, are called herl. Anglers prize the herl of the peacock's tail, whose iridescent barbs are stripped from the quill and wound onto hooks to give artificial flies a shimmering body. Few people outside fly-tying circles ever meet the word, which is why it tends to surprise them. Its ancestry is much less certain. The word is English, and it belongs to the older vocabulary of feathers and fishing rather than to the Latin and French layers that supply so much of the language. Beyond that, the sources do not give a secure chain of descent, so the exact origin remains unresolved.

Synonyms: fiber, strand