varnishment
varnishment noun: the act or process of embellishing something in order to make it more attractive.
Noun
varnishment (countable and uncountable, plural varnishments)
- The act or process of embellishing something in order to make it more attractive.
- The print of my finger thou hast defaced, and with arts-vanishing varnishment made thyself a changeling from the form I first cast thee in; Satan take her to thee, with black boiling pitch rough-cast over her counterfeit red and white; and whereas she was wont in ass's milk to bathe her to engrain...1815, Sir Egerton Brydges, Archaica: Containing a Reprint of Scarce Old English Prose Tracts, page 132
- You cataracts and hurricanoes spout,' until ye have swept away all hypocrisies and impostures from the face of the earth; have demolished all counterfeit truths, and lying pretences; have drenched through and through the glossy varnishments and starched fineries of mock righteousness; have stripped...1849, T.T. Campbell, “Antagonism”, in The United Counties Miscellany
Examples of varnishment in a sentence
- But not by suggestion, innuendo, varnishment.1966, The Double Dealer - Volumes 3-4, page 230:
- The New World was experiencing the cruelties of many of these mercenary adventurers whose religious medals, Crucifixes and Rosary mumblings were varnishments of a ferocious quest for gold.1969, K. T. Wills, Vanozza: A Novel of the Enigmatical Borgias of the Renaissance:
- It had once been painted, but the rain and the snow had now denuded it of all such outward varnishment, and without any spire or porch, it was simple enough in its exterior for a Quaker tabernacle.2003, Judith A. Ranta, The Life and Writings of Betsey Chamberlain: Native American Mill Worker, →ISBN:
Forms of varnishment
| plural | varnishments |
|---|
Origin of varnishment
From varnish + -ment.
Questions about varnishment
- What does varnishment mean?
- Varnishment means the act or process of embellishing something in order to make it more attractive.
- How do you use varnishment in a sentence?
- But not by suggestion, innuendo, varnishment.
- What part of speech is varnishment?
- Varnishment is a noun.
- What is the plural of varnishment?
- The plural of varnishment is varnishments.
Words near varnishment in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: varnishment (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “varnishment.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/varnishment. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.