Other forms: brushes, brushed, brushing
To brush is to clean or smooth something with a tool full of bristles. Teeth, hair, a coat, a floor.
The noun and the verb share a shape, so you brush your hair with a brush. Painting uses the same word for a quite different tool. Beyond cleaning, the verb means to touch lightly in passing, as in a sleeve brushing against a door, and from there comes brush past somebody. Two phrasal verbs earn their place: brushing up on a subject means revising it, and brushing something off means dismissing it.
1verbverbTo clean or smooth something with a bristled tool.
“He brushed his coat down before leaving.”
2verbtouchTo touch something lightly in passing.
“Her hand brushed his as she took the cup.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Frankish
*bursti
Vulgar Latin
*brustia
Old French
broisse
Middle English
brusshe
English, today
brush
From Middle English brusshe, from Old French broisse, from Vulgar Latin brustia, from Frankish bursti. From Middle English brusshe, from Old French broisse (Modern French brosse), from Vulgar Latin brustia, from Frankish bursti, from Proto-Germanic burstiz (“bristle”), or also Vulgar Latin bruscia, from Proto-Germanic bruskaz (“tuft, thicket, underbrush”), which could be from Proto-Indo-European bʰrusgo-.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA