burnish
Other forms: burnished; burnishing; burnishes
That seductive gleam on that Porsche behind the dealer's window? It's called a burnish, a gloss only achieved by loads of polishing. Likewise, you can burnish a resume by polishing it until it's perfect.
A caution about usage: burnish in the physical sense is usually reserved for inanimate objects, not people — you usually wouldn't say that someone's appearance is "burnished to perfection" or that your freshly scrubbed face is burnished. But you could burnish a car, a suit of armor, or a copper kettle. Reputations are among the most common non-physical things to be burnished.
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polish and make shiny
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the property of being smooth and shinysynonyms: gloss, glossiness, polishtypes:French polishthe glaze produced by repeated applications of French polish shellacglazea glossy finish on a fabricpatinaa sheen or gloss on a surface, especially resulting from use or agetype of:smoothnessa texture without roughness; smooth to the toucheffulgence, radiance, radiancy, refulgence, refulgency, shinethe quality of being bright and sending out rays of light
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bring to a highly developed, finished, or refined state
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Vocabulary lists containing burnish
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After having a child out of wedlock, Hester Prynne is shunned by her Puritan community and forced to wear a scarlet "A" on her clothing — but Hester is not the only one who has transgressed. This classic novel explores guilt, sin, and hypocrisy.
