A depilatory is a cream that dissolves hair at the surface. Use a depilatory, a depilatory cream, a depilatory test patch.
It works by breaking the bonds in the hair protein, which is why it smells as it does and why leaving it on too long burns the skin. A test patch first is the standard instruction and the one most often ignored.
1noundepilatoryA cream that dissolves hair at the surface.
“She spread the depilatory on her legs, waited ten minutes and wiped the hair away.”
depilatory is a product.
French depilatoire comes from Latin depilare, to strip of hair — de plus pilus, a hair.
French
dépilatoire
English, today
depilatory
From French dépilatoire.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA