burnish

Pronunciation: /ˈbɜːnɪʃ/

The English word “burnish” has 9 meanings listed here.

verb

To make (something, such as a surface) bright, shiny, and smooth by, or (by extension) as if by, rubbing; to polish, to shine.
Of a stag: to remove the velvet (“skin and fine fur”) from (its antlers) by rubbing them against something; to velvet.
To make (someone or something) appear positive and highly respected.
To become bright, glossy, and smooth; to brighten, to gleam, to shine forth.
Of a person's body: to grow large or stout; to fatten, to fill out.
Of a thing: to increase in size; to expand, to spread out, to swell.

noun

A shine of something which has been polished; a lustre, a polish.
A shiny layer applied to a surface or other thing.
The making of something bright, shiny, and smooth by, or (by extension) as if by, rubbing; (countable) an instance of this; a burnishing, a polishing, a shining.

Etymology

The verb is derived from Middle English burnishen, burnysshen (“to polish, burnish; (figuratively) to brighten, give lustre to; to clean (something) until shiny; to decorate (with something shiny), adorn”) [and other forms], from burniss-, a stem of Old French burnir (compare, for example, the first-person present singular indicative form burnis), a variant of brunir (“to make clean and shiny,…

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