Aftershave is a scented liquid put on the face after shaving. Splash on aftershave, a bottle of aftershave, the smell of aftershave.
The sting is the alcohol, which was meant as an antiseptic on the small cuts shaving leaves, and balms without it are gentler and now commoner. In Britain the word covers men's fragrance generally, which is not what it originally meant.
1nounaftershaveA scented liquid put on the face after shaving.
“The lift smelled strongly of someone's aftershave.”
aftershave is a toiletry.
Proto-Indo-European
*skabʰ- — to cut, split, form, carve
Proto-Germanic
*skabaną — to scrape
Proto-West Germanic
*skaban
Old English
sċafan — to shave, scrape, shred, polish
Middle English
shaven
English
shave
English, today
aftershave
From after- + shave. shave Middle English shaven, schaven, from Old English sċafan (“to shave, scrape, shred, polish”), from Proto-West Germanic skaban, from Proto-Germanic skabaną (“to scrape”), from Proto-Indo-European skabʰ- (“to cut, split, form, carve”). Cognate with West Frisian skave, Dutch schaven, Low German schaven, German schaben, Danish skave, Norwegian Nynorsk skava, Swedish skava, Icelandic skafa, Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌰𐌱𐌰𐌽, all roughly “to scrape, chafe, shave, plane, remove the outer lay of”.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA