preening

“Pelosi,” by Molly BallIn Ball’s account, Nancy Pelosi is as tough as bullets and knows how to count votes, negotiate and herd her tribe — lost skills in American politics, atrophied in the modern-day rush to preen and tweet.

The book, surprisingly, is not the self-aggrandizing vanity trip of a preening pop star one would expect.

Preening, arrogant, vindictive, and inexorable; awash with cash; corrupt; in bed with corporate America and big finance.

Norm is a symbol of implacable corporate power—preening, surgically perfected, casually domineering.

Astonishingly, no one falls prey to the posturing or preening that haunts most Western conferences.

I looked up to see where my bird of paradise had landed—presumably in a soft cloud in the rafters, preening her feathers.

Jessie had dressed Henrietta, and the child was preening herself in the sun like a peacock.

The doves were cooing and fluttering in the cornices and the cockatoo was preening his lemon colored topknot.

He stopped short, drawing himself up and preening in the way that was half infuriating and half pathetic.

Annie was careless, and she was dainty, and she was conscious of a little pleasurable preening of her own soul-plumage.

Persis herself was like a pouter pigeon strutting and preening her high breast.