Pluck/Plucky

It is very strange that pluck or to pluck, as both noun and verb, meaning to pull or tug, as in to pluck a chicken or pluck someone from the jaws of death, should eventually also come to mean courage or resolve. According to the OED, the original meaning dates from at least the 1400s, but from the early 1600s, as a noun, pluck took on the additional meaning of the heart, lungs and viscera of animals. By the early 1700s, this same sense was then applied to humans. From here, it was but a short etymological step for pluck to mean the heart or seat of courage, which the OED says derives from pugilistic slang c. 1785 when determined fighters would typically display ‘pluck’. Not long after this, c. 1826 according to the OED, the colloquial adjective ‘plucky’ then arrived on the scene. All of which is a bit of a long and involved story, but this is simply the way with the etymology of some words in English.