burnish
A shine of something which has been polishedA shine of something which has been polished; a lustre, a polish.
» The company is trying to burnish its image after the scandal.
rul · Tatoeba · CC BY 2.0 FRMeaning
3 senses(countable, uncountable)A shine of something which has been polished; a lustre, a polish.
(countable, uncountable)A shiny layer applied to a surface or other thing.
(uncountable)The making of something bright, shiny, and smooth by, or (by extension) as if by, rubbing; (countable) an instance of this; a burnishing, a polishing, a shining.
With a good burnish, the old table should fetch a higher price.
the property of being smooth and shiny
Examples
5 sentencesThe company is trying to burnish its image after the scandal.
Tom made attempts to burnish his public image after a myriad of scandals.
This metal burnishes well.
ruЭтот металл хорошо полируется. — Hellerick
But after more than a year in prison, he escaped, further burnishing his legendary status.
A person's reputation can be greatly burnished or tarnished depending on how the media chooses to cover them.
Origin
The verb is derived from Middle English burnishen, burnysshen (“to polish, burnish; (figurThe verb is derived from Middle English burnishen, burnysshen (“to polish, burnish; (figuratively) to brighten, give lustre to; to clean (something) until shiny; to decorate (with something shiny), adorn”) [and other forms], from burniss-, a stem of Old French burnir (compare, for example, the first-person present singular indicative form burnis), a variant of brunir (“to make clean and shiny, polish; to make brown”) (modern French brunir), from Frankish *brūnijan (“to polish, make resplendent”), from Proto-Germanic *brūnijaną (“to decorate; tan”), from Proto-Germanic *brūnaz (“brown”, adjective), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *bʰerH- (“brown”, adjective). Unrelated to burn.
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Forms
plural: burnishesSynonyms
3 synonyms- the property of being smooth and shiny:polishglossglossiness
Lessons for this word
1 lessons- A1Countable and uncountable nouns — Because it can be uncountable