Shaving

How to spell shaving

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce shaving

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shaving mean?

1. nounThe act of cutting hair, especially from the face, very close to the skin with a razor.
2. nounA thin sliver or curl of material pared from a larger piece, such as wood, metal, or chocolate.

Shaving in a sentence

• He keeps a small mirror by the sink for shaving.

• A single shaving of cedar curled away from the plane.

• A hot towel before shaving softens the stubble.

• She garnished the dessert with a delicate shaving of dark chocolate.

Where does shaving come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word traces back to the Old English verb sceafan, meaning to scrape, pare, or smooth a surface, which belonged to a wider Germanic family that also gave Dutch schaven and German schaben, both still meaning to scrape or plane. The literal early sense was simply removing a thin layer from something hard, so a carpenter shaving wood and a man shaving his face share exactly the same idea of paring away a fine surface. The -ing ending does double duty here: it forms the gerund naming the action (the act of shaving) and a countable noun for what is pared off (a curl of wood or metal). Because the root verb shave already lost the older spelling sceaf, the modern form is phonetically regular, and the long vowel is simply marked by the silent final e of shave that drops before -ing. The same root quietly survives in the woodworking tool called a spokeshave.

How the word is built

• shav- (from shave, Old English sceafan: to scrape or pare)
• -ing (forming a gerund and a count noun)