Other forms: mascaras
Mascara is the dark, sticky make-up you brush onto your eyelashes to make them look longer and thicker. The little tube with the spiral wand, the smudge under one eye by midnight, the black streaks after a good cry.
It goes on lashes and nowhere else — eyeliner draws the line along the lid, eyeshadow colours the skin above it, and swapping those three names is the usual mistake. You put mascara on, wear it, or apply it, and a coat of mascara is the standard measure. Waterproof mascara survives swimming and funerals, at the cost of needing remover to get it off. Panda eyes is what English calls the result when the ordinary kind runs. It is uncountable, so ask for some mascara rather than a mascara, unless you are the one counting stock.
1nounmascaraA dark cosmetic brushed onto the eyelashes to darken and thicken them.
“She put on a second coat of mascara in the taxi.”
mascara is a cosmetic.
Mascara comes from Italian maschera, 'mask'. That is the whole story, and it is a good one: the paint you put on your face is named after the thing people once held in front of it. A mask changes a face for an evening; mascara does a smaller version of the same job.
Italian
maschera — mask
English, today
mascara
From Italian maschera (“mask”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA