How to use burnish in a sentence

15 example sentences · verb, noun

Burnish means to make (something, such as a surface) bright, shiny, and smooth by, or (by extension) as if by, rubbing; to polish, to shine. Example: “In pottery, a stone is sometimes used to burnish a pot before firing, giving it a smooth, shiny look.”

Examples of burnish by meaning

verbTo make (something, such as a surface) bright, shiny, and smooth by, or (by extension) as if by, rubbing; to polish, to...

In pottery, a stone is sometimes used to burnish a pot before firing, giving it a smooth, shiny look.
The locomotive had been magnificently burnished at Norwich depot, with polished brasswork and red-painted coupling rods—all the more creditable, Dr.1960 March, “Notes and News: Two Scenes from Norfolk”, in Railway Magazine, page 214

verbTo make (someone or something) appear positive and highly respected.

Bonnie Parker helped burnish her own image.2006, Laura Browder, “Maid Marians and Bad Mothers: From the Gungirls of the 1920s to the Gangsters of the 1930s”, in Her Best Shot: Women...
Desperate to burnish her legacy, Louise pleads her case for higher status based on her achievements on Earth as a philanthropist, artist, and occasional royal rebel.2016, Geo Takach, “War of the Wild Roses”, in A. Hansen, S. Depoe, editors, Scripting the Environment: Oil, Democracy and the Sands of Time...

nounThe making of something bright, shiny, and smooth by, or (by extension) as if by, rubbing; (countable) an instance of...

With a good burnish, the old table should fetch a higher price.

More sentences with burnish

Instead the material is perfectly executed punkadelic glam-bop burnished with a healthy dose of metallic insolence.1987 April, Judge I-Rankin', “Underground”, in Spin, page 41. From the entry punkadelic
This example is a primitive burnished earthenware with chattered vertical comb lines.[1973 May, Mino Yutaka, “Liao Dynasty Ceramics at China House Gallery New York”, in The Connoisseur, volume 183, number 735, The National…. From the entry Chifeng
Thus you could see the burnished helmet of each warrior set in readiness above his head.1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 33. From the entry viking
It’s also burnished by intriguing sense of vaguely dub-influenced space.2020 April 23, Alexis Petridis, “The Rolling Stones: Living in a Ghost Town review – their best new song in years”, in The Guardian. From the entry dub
His bald spot gleams like a burnished conker.2006, Peter Godwin, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa. From the entry conker
Levinas seems to be offering new words or newly burnished words for old, those apparent semantic neologisms are more like pre-semantic paleologisms.1995, John Llewelyn, Emmanuel Levinas: The Genealogy of Ethics, →ISBN, page 163. From the entry paleologism
A big, crisp, nicely burnished oval that’s baked in a clay oven, this style of guokui comes with an improbably thin layer of filling that packs a flavorful punch.2020 August 11, Florence Fabricant, “A Filled Chinese Flatbread Comes to Manhattan”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from…. From the entry flavorful
But all the while he is staring into the burnished pan of his shovel, which catches the reflection of a chrome hub cap whirling by on the road.2011, Donn Pearce, Cool Hand Luke, →ISBN. From the entry eyeballer
Louis's rhythm section and the backing by Trummy Young and clarinetist Joe Darensbourg were right on the money, and his trumpet solo and burnished vocal were ringingly, inimitably Armstrongian.2001, Gary Giddins, Satchmo: The Genius of Louis Armstrong, page 143. From the entry Armstrongian
On it stood a silver tray of smokables and a burnished spirit-stand, from which and an adjacent siphon my silent host proceeded to charge two high glasses.1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC. From the entry smokable

Meaning of burnish

verb To make (something, such as a surface) bright, shiny, and smooth by, or (by extension) as if by, rubbing; to polish, to shine.
verb Of a stag: to remove the velvet (“skin and fine fur”) from (its antlers) by rubbing them against something; to velvet.
verb To make (someone or something) appear positive and highly respected.

Full definition of burnish

Questions about burnish in a sentence

How do you use burnish in a sentence?: Burnish is used as a verb and noun. For example: “In pottery, a stone is sometimes used to burnish a pot before firing, giving it a smooth, shiny look.”
What is a short sentence with burnish?: “Bonnie Parker helped burnish her own image.”
What does burnish mean?: Burnish means to make (something, such as a surface) bright, shiny, and smooth by, or (by extension) as if by, rubbing; to polish, to shine.

Adapted from Wiktionary: burnish (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use burnish in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/burnish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.