putzen

Pronunciation: /ˈpʊt͡sn̩/

“putzen” is a German word. Its 4 meanings in English:

verb

to clean, especially by rubbing with something wet, to brush (one's teeth)
to groom oneself
to beautify oneself by washing, styling, and putting on fancy clothes
to plaster

Etymology

15th century, also in the form butzen. Origin unknown. Perhaps derived from Middle High German butze (“lump, piece, stump”), from Old High German *butz, from Proto-West Germanic *butt, from Proto-Germanic *buttaz (whence also English butt), with the interpretation of the verb being "to (remove) lumps and stumps", but there are several other theories. Perhaps related to Latin puto in the sense of…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “putzen” there

More German words

About this dictionary

The German dictionary on Glottosphere has 83,586 entries with a page. Browse the German dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.