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brush cut

brush cut

1 4.2
A short haircut with hair standing upright like a brush
  • noun
  • /brʌʃ kʌt/
translation icon : corte de cepillo
  • The soldier's brush cut made him look disciplined and ready for duty.
  • brush cut hair
  • gray brush cut

Examples

  • Adams was in his early fifties, with pale blue eyes, a broad forehead, and brush-cut gray hair.

    Fiction book (2002)
  • "My father was an earnest, cheerful man, a geologist with a brush cut and a big heart.

    Fiction book (1992)
  • He had the sexy brush cut.

  • Kev, by that time, you're gonna want to get a brush cut!

    Blog text (11)
  • Adams had pale blue eyes, a broad forehead, and brush-cut gray hair.

    Fiction book (2002)
  • His brush cut stands spiky above blue eyes that can't help looking at the front of Victoria's shirt.

    Fiction book (2002)
  • The fourth guy was a tall heavyweight with a gelled blond brush cut above a meaty red face.

    Fiction book (2002)
  • Quill's immaculate brush cut swept back from his widow's peak in a broad, white stripe; when he frowned, he looked fierce.

    Fiction book (1998)
  • In the mid 1960s, undergraduate men sported brush cuts and women attended class in upscale wardrobes crowned with frosted, streaked, well-tended coiffures.

    Fiction book (2000)
  • He decided to get a brush cut for the summer to keep cool in the heat.

Synonyms

haircut
vsbrush cut
111 1.0

To cut and shape a person's hair

is a very short style with hair standing upright like bristles
hairdo
vsbrush cut
50 2.9

A way of cutting and arranging someone's hair

is a short upright style where hair stands up like bristles

Antonyms

longhair
  • Informal
1 6.4

A person with long hair often linked to artists or rebellion

Long, thick hair that looks messy and not neat

How Short

crew cut
7 3.0
brush cut
1 4.2
haircut
132 1.0

Surface Forms

brush cut singular
brush cuts plural

Morphology

brush + cut

The meaning is directly inferable from combining 'brush' (evoking bristles/brush-like appearance) with 'cut' (a haircut): it denotes a haircut that makes the hair stand up like a brush. This compositional, descriptive pattern (noun modifying a type of cut) is common and would be understandable to a B1 learner who knows the constituent words.

Etymology

Brush cut comes from the way the hair is cut so short that it stands up like the short hairs on a brush, and cut simply means the hairstyle. That's why brush cut means a very short, upright haircut.