blacking

1 8.6

A paste people use to polish shoes or boots and make them shine

noun
/ˈblækɪŋ/

Archaic

: betún

I need to buy more blacking to polish my shoes before the party.
boot-blacking
blacking paste

Examples

He uses a special blacking to maintain the luster of his favorite pair of boots.
A good blacking is all they need.

Random Harvest (1942)
OK, I have added some antique blacking to this.
What have you got against boot blacking?

The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)
At Hyatt's General Store, we stopped for supplies: flour, sugar, and boot-blacking.

Fiction book (1992)
This brand of blacking makes my boots shine like new.

Synonyms

shoe polish

vsblacking

4 2.0

A wax or cream you put on shoes to make them shine and protect them

is for certain types of footwear rather than all kinds

Surface Forms

blacking singular

blackings plural

Morphology

blacking = black (transparent) = black + ing

Clear, productive formation from the verb 'black' + '-ing' meaning the action or substance for blackening; learners knowing 'black' and '-ing' can infer this use.

Etymology

Blacking comes from the simple word black ('black') plus the ending -ing, which turns an action into a thing. It names the paste used to 'make black' and shine shoes or boots, so the origin explains exactly why blacking means a dark shoe polish.