POLISHING • DICCIONARIO INGLES.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

... believe was what regarded my dear A—— and the person into whose hands she is about to be committed. In proportion to the value of the gem is the dread one feels of the flaws and injuries it may receive in the process of cutting and polishing; and this, of course, not in this case alone, but that of every child who still is parent to the man (or woman). My mother said in one of her letters, "I have engaged a lady to be A——'s governess." Of course the have must make the expression ...

— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... the engineer is twofold—to design the work, and to see the work done. We have seen already something of the vociferous thoroughness of the man, upon the cleaning of lamps and the polishing of reflectors. In building, in road-making, in the construction of bridges, in every detail and byway of his employments, he pursued the same ideal. Perfection (with a capital P and violently under-scored) was his design. A crack ...

— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... better part of a week with such tools as he could find or make—he had to forge a wrench for the largest nuts—"taking down" the dynamo, oiling, filing, polishing and repairing it, ...

— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... sewed, and put her garden in shape for the winter. In spite of her year's training at Mrs. Gray's capable hands, she made mistakes; she burnt the grape jelly, and forgot to put the brown sugar into the sweet pickle, and took the varnish off the dining-room table by polishing it with raw linseed oil, and boiled the color out of her sheerest chiffon blouse; and they laughed together over her blunders. Then, when evening came, she was all in white again, and there was the simple supper served by candle-light in the little dining-room, and ...

— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes

... low fellow," Ieremia declared, pausing in the polishing of his spectacles. "He is a scoundrel and a blackguard. He should be struck by a dead pig, by a particularly ...

— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

More quotes...