blacking
/'blækiɳ/
Definition
- Noun:
- A black paste or polish used for cleaning, polishing, and providing a protective shine to leather footwear, especially shoes and boots. It is a specific type of shoe polish.
Usage
- Blacking is a mass noun (uncountable). It refers to the substance itself.
- It is applied to footwear to clean, darken, and shine the leather.
- While historically common, the term is less frequent in modern everyday language, often replaced by more general terms like "shoe polish" or "boot polish."
Examples
- Noun:
- He applied a coat of blacking to his old leather boots.
- A tin of blacking was essential for maintaining a soldier's uniform.
- The butler used blacking to keep the family's shoes looking impeccable.
Advanced Usage
- "To give something a blacking": An older phrase meaning to apply blacking to something.
- The shoes needed to be given a good blacking before the parade.
Variants and Related Words
- Black (verb): To make something black; to apply blacking.
- He blacked his boots every morning.
- Shoe polish / Boot polish (n): Modern, more general terms for substances, including blacking, used to polish footwear.
- Blanco (n): A white compound used for cleaning webbing equipment, analogous to blacking but for a different color and material.
Synonyms
- Shoe polish
- Boot black (archaic)
- Dubbin (specifically a greasy preparation for waterproofing leather, often dark in color)
Related Phrases
- Boots blacked: A phrase describing footwear that has been polished with blacking.
- For the inspection, every soldier's boots were to be perfectly blacked.
Noun
-
a substance used to produce a shiny protective surface on footwear
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