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brushing

brushing

3 1.0
To move a brush through hair to make it smooth
  • noun
  • /ˈbrʌʃɪŋ/
translation icon : cepillado
  • As she wrapped the tubes in a laboratory requisition form and tucked the little package into a plastic bag, Judy resolved to come back and give Beatrice's hair a full one hundred strokes of brushing.
  • hair brushing
  • dry brushing
  • daily brushing

Examples

  • Come here, your hair needs brushing.

  • Muffin had chestnut hair that looked like burnished bronze after a brushing.

    Fiction book (1995)
  • And she gets up and she starts brushing out her hair.

  • His round head needed a good brushing.

    Fiction book (1994)
  • The long brown hair was lank and needed brushing.

    Fiction book (2001)
  • I'm going to start with brushing these eyebrows.

  • I start off by brushing the brow hairs up.

  • Her auburn hair was parted on the side and fell simply to her shoulders in a way that betrayed nothing but a good brushing.

    Fiction book (1990)
  • Regular brushing of the dogs is advised as it helps to remove dead hairs and dander, enhances circulation, and helps to spread the natural oil produced by the dog's skin.

    Blog text (16)
  • She spends every morning brushing her hair to keep it smooth and shiny.

Synonyms

brush
vsbrushing
22 1.0

Cleaning or arranging something with a brush

is limited to moving a bristled tool through hair to smooth or tidy it
comb
vsbrushing
21 1.0

Pulling a comb through hair to make it neat

focuses on smoothing or tidying hair by moving a bristled tool through it

Compounds

brushing machine
  • Specialized
6.0

A machine that makes fabric surface soft and smooth by raising small fibers

How Tidy

styling
12 3.5
combing
1 1.4
brushing
3 1.0
to messing
  • Informal
3 3.5

Surface Forms

brushing singular
brushings plural

Morphology

brushing = brush (transparent) = brush + ing

Derived from the verb 'brush' with the gerundive '-ing', indicating the action of moving a brush; meaning is directly related to the base verb.

Etymology

Brushing comes from brush, which originally meant a bundle of twigs used to sweep or smooth things. So brushing is moving a brush through hair to 'tidy' and 'smooth' it, which is why regular brushing makes hair neat and shiny.