Lipstick
nounA solid cosmetic stick used to colour the lips.
How to spell lipstick
8 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce lipstick
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does lipstick mean?
- nounA solid cosmetic stick used to colour the lips.
Lipstick in a sentence
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She reapplied her red lipstick before the meeting.
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A tube of lipstick had melted at the bottom of her handbag.
Where does lipstick come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
This is a transparent English compound formed from two very old native words, 'lip' and 'stick'. 'Lip' descends from the Old English 'lippa', which named the soft fleshy borders of the mouth and shares ancestry with Germanic relatives such as Dutch 'lip' and German 'Lippe'. 'Stick' comes from Old English 'sticca', meaning a small rod or twig, the same root that gives us the verb 'to stick'. The two were joined in the early twentieth century, once cosmetic colour was first moulded into a solid, swivelling rod-shaped form rather than sold as a paste or salve. The name simply describes the object literally: a stick of colour for the lips, which is why the spelling holds no surprises beyond remembering it is written as one solid word.
How the word is built
- lip (the fleshy edge of the mouth)
- stick (a small rod-shaped object)
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