Word.ws English Dictionary

five and nine

five and nine noun: basic facial greasepaint makeup.

Noun

five and nine (uncountable)

  1. (informal) Basic facial greasepaint makeup.
    • Not much "beautiful dignity" about her now! she thought, looking at her smudged eyes and the tracks her tears had made in carefully applied five and nine. Her black tin box of makeup — her most treasured possession — sat before her, […]1995, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Marking Time, page 263
    • […] before many years had passed I would be plastered in the greasy 'five and nine' cosmetics beloved of the theatrical profession.2014, Evadne Hinge, The Naked Doctor, page 69

Origin of five and nine

From the product numbering used by the Leichner cosmetics company.

Questions about five and nine

What does five and nine mean?
Five and nine means basic facial greasepaint makeup.
What part of speech is five and nine?
Five and nine is a noun.

Words near five and nine in the dictionary

  1. five
  2. five aggregates
  3. Five Alls
  4. five and dime
  5. five and dimes
  6. five and nine
  7. five and ten
  8. five and tens
  9. Five Ashes
  10. Five Books of Moses
  11. Five Boroughs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: five and nine (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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