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Burnish   /bˈərnɪʃ/   Listen
verb
Burnish  v. t.  (past & past part. burnished; pres. part. burnishing)  To cause to shine; to make smooth and bright; to polish; specifically, to polish by rubbing with something hard and smooth; as, to burnish brass or paper. "The frame of burnished steel, that east a glare From far, and seemed to thaw the freezing air." "Now the village windows blaze, Burnished by the setting sun."
Burnishing machine, a machine for smoothing and polishing by compression, as in making paper collars.



Burnish  v. i.  To shine forth; to brighten; to become smooth and glossy, as from swelling or filling out; hence, to grow large. "A slender poet must have time to grow, And spread and burnish as his brothers do." "My thoughts began to burnish, sprout, and swell."



noun
Burnish  n.  The effect of burnishing; gloss; brightness; luster.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Burnish" Quotes from Famous Books



... is one admirable word here, enbarnis, which has so long been lost to French that it is not even in Littre. But Dryden's "burnish into man" probably preserves it in English; for this is certainly not the other "burnish" from brunir. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... to have been devoured at a gulp. The heavenly lights had lost all power in face of this earthly glory. A mist of smoke had switched off the gleam of starlight, and the moon and mock-moons wore the tarnished hue of silver that has lost its burnish. The ghosts of the aurora no longer trod their measure of stately minuet. They had passed into the world of shadow to ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... creamy tan of her round slim arms showed to the elbow; her hat she had taken off, and the sun danced in the gold lustres of her hair. She was all aglow; she belonged out in the fresh air and the sunlight like this; she could stand it; that dusky-gold radiance played from her like a burnish. Steering sat down on the log bench and watched her, hypnotised by her into haunting fancies of something, somebody, somewhere. She was one of those beings whose rich magnetism of face and personality brings them close to you, not only ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... bright with burnish'd shields, The embattled legions stretch their long array; Discord's red torch, as fierce she scours the fields, With bloody tincture stains the face ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... for miles around. The whole arc of the sky, the whole circle of the world's rim, lay bare to the eye, infinitely varied by clouds and cloud-shadows, by pasture and arable, dark patches of woods and pallor of pools, by the lambent burnish of the west and the soft purpling of the east, even by differing weathers—here great shafts of sunlight, there the blurred column of a distant shower, or the faint smear, like a bruise upon the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse


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