POLISHING • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Polishing

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/pˈɑlɪʃɪŋ/ Listen

noun

Polishing n. A. & n. from Polish.

Polishing iron, an iron burnisher; esp., a small smoothing iron used in laundries.

Polishing slate.

(a)

A gray or yellow slate, found in Bohemia and Auvergne, and used for polishing glass, marble, and metals.

(b)

A kind of hone or whetstone; hone slate.

Polishing snake, a tool used in cleaning lithographic stones.

Polishing wheel, a wheel or disk coated with, or composed of, abrading material, for polishing a surface.

verb

Polish v. t. (past & past part. polished; pres. part. polishing)

To make smooth and glossy, usually by friction; to burnish; to overspread with luster; as, to polish glass, marble, metals, etc.

Hence, to refine; to wear off the rudeness, coarseness, or rusticity of; to make elegant and polite; as, to polish life or manners.

To polish off, to finish completely, as an adversary. (Slang)

Polish v. i. To become smooth, as from friction; to receive a gloss; to take a smooth and glossy surface; as, steel polishes well.

See images of 'Polishing'

Etymology of 'Polishing'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Polishing" Quotes from Famous Books

... giving the last rub to the shirt-bosom she was polishing, and setting her flat-iron back on the stove with a smack,—"there, honey; and I couldn't have done better by that buzzum if ...

— Outpost • J.G. Austin

... of limestone that formed a miniature bluff twenty feet high and a hundred in length. Under an overhanging ledge, they found two cushions, a red-and-gray blanket, and some odds and ends of old garments that looked as though they had once been used for polishing rags. There was a broken kitchen spoon, and a cold chisel, and some other ...

— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... soldiers. And, knowing that the great force of the barbarians lay chiefly in their swords, with which they laid about them in a rude and inartificial manner, hacking and hewing the head and shoulders, he caused head-pieces entire of iron to be made for most of his men, smoothing and polishing the outside, that the enemy's swords, lighting upon them, might either slide off or be broken; and fitted also their shields with a little rim of brass, the wood itself not being sufficient to bear ...

— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... to a man who was polishing some newly laid tile, who replied, "Mrs. Sturgis? I think she's in her office. It's straight back through the door. She was there a minute ago, with ...

— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton

... himself was rather disturbed by this countrified utterance, and it occurred to him that his new-found son needed considerable polishing. ...

— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger

More quotes...