panache [L16th] Soldiers in the 16th century would often wear a tuft or plume of feathers in their helmets. This tuft or plume was the original panache, a word that goes back to Latin pinnaculum ‘little feather’ from pinna ‘feather, wing, pointed peak’. Men trying to give an impression of elegance or swagger would imitate the fashion, whose stylish associations gave rise to the modern sense, ‘flamboyant confidence’, in the late 19th century. Pinnaculum is also the source of pinnacle [ME], and pinna of a bird’s pinion [LME], and of *pen and *pin.