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Glite Dictionary
🧴 A skin lotion 🌳 A small tree
wych hazel

wych hazel

8.5
A liquid made from a plant that you put on skin to clean and soothe it
  • noun
  • /ˈwɪtʃ ˈheɪzl/
  • UK
translation icon : loción de hamamelis
  • After shaving, he applied wych hazel to soothe his skin.

Examples

  • The pharmacist recommended wych hazel for minor skin irritations and cuts.

  • She always keeps a bottle of wych hazel in her medicine cabinet for first aid.

  • I applied wych hazel to soothe my skin.

  • Many people use wych hazel for acne treatment.

  • After shaving, he applied wych hazel to soothe his skin.

  • She always keeps a bottle of wych hazel in her medicine cabinet for first aid.

  • The pharmacist recommended wych hazel for minor skin irritations and cuts.

Synonyms

lotion
vswych hazel
95 1.0

A liquid you put on your skin to make it less dry, protect it, or help heal it

is a specific alcoholic astringent version used mainly for skin care
witch hazel
vswych hazel
1 5.1

A liquid made from the plant's bark and leaves to soothe skin

is an alcoholic astringent lotion rather than a general extract

How Astringent

astringent
  • Specialized
1 7.7
wych hazel
  • UK
8.5
toner
4 3.7
lotion
95 1.0
moisturizer
  • US
30 3.2

Surface Forms

wych hazel singular
wych hazels plural

Morphology

wych + hazel

Although 'hazel' signals a plant, the phrase denotes a specific astringent lotion made from witch-hazel; knowing 'wych' (an elm) plus 'hazel' (a shrub) does not lead a B1 learner to infer a medicinal alcoholic extract or lotion. The sense is lexicalized, specialized, and partly historical/orthographic (wych/witch), so the overall meaning is not predictable from the constituents.

Etymology

Wych hazel can also mean the 'skin lotion' made from that plant; because people used the plant to make a liquid that soothed cuts and irritation, the word now names the lotion itself.