means A feather, especially a large or showy one, or anything that rises and spreads in a feathery shape — like a trailing column of smoke, water, or dust.

from From Latin pluma, meaning the soft down or feather of a bird, which drifted through Old French as plume into English. The same root gives us plumage and even plumber — yes, the pipe-fixer — because Romans worked in lead (plumbum), though that's a separate heavy-metal cousin rather than a feathered one. The 'smoke and dust' sense came later, English noticing that a rising column of vapor does a fair impression of a feather standing on end.