Word.ws English Dictionary

gua sha

Syllables: gua·sha/ɡwɑ ˈʃɑ/

gua sha noun: a treatment used in traditional Chinese medicine involving repeated pressured strokes over the skin with a hard object thereby breaking surface capillaries and leaving light bruising, claimed to release unhealthy bodily matter.

Noun

gua sha (uncountable)

  1. A treatment used in traditional Chinese medicine involving repeated pressured strokes over the skin with a hard object thereby breaking surface capillaries and leaving light bruising, claimed to release unhealthy bodily matter.
    • Looksmaxxing attaches "scores" to aspects of male appearance, focusing particularly on jawline, muscularity and skin. Looksmaxxers aim to increase their scores via "softmaxxing" (such as using a gua sha, burning more calories than consumed, or moisturising) and "hardmaxxing" (such as steroid use...2024 March 26, Riley Farrell, “Inside looksmaxxing, the extreme cosmetic social media trend”, in BBC, archived from the original on 23 Apr 2024

Origin of gua sha

Borrowed from Mandarin 刮痧 (guāshā, literally “scrape sand”).

Questions about gua sha

What does gua sha mean?
Gua sha means a treatment used in traditional Chinese medicine involving repeated pressured strokes over the skin with a hard object thereby breaking surface capillaries and leaving light bruising, claimed to release unhealthy bodily matter.
What part of speech is gua sha?
Gua sha is a noun.
How do you pronounce gua sha?
Gua sha is pronounced /ɡwɑ ˈʃɑ/.

Words near gua sha in the dictionary

  1. Gu'an
  2. gu.
  3. GUA
  4. gua bao
  5. gua baos
  6. gua sha
  7. guabenxan
  8. guac
  9. guacamole
  10. guacamoles
  11. guacetisal

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gua sha (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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