Varnishment
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The act or process of embellishing something in order to make it more attractive. archaic, countable, uncountable
"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 her skin more gentle, pliant, delicate and supple, in bubbling scalding lead, and fatty flame-feeding brimstone see thou unceasingly bathe her."
Example
More examples"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 her skin more gentle, pliant, delicate and supple, in bubbling scalding lead, and fatty flame-feeding brimstone see thou unceasingly bathe her."
Etymology
From varnish + -ment.
More for "varnishment"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.