Fard

Word of the Day for Tuesday, April 24, 2012

fard \fahrd\, verb:

1. To apply cosmetics.

noun:
1. Facial cosmetics.

She's farded inch-thick with affectation. She's perfumed to suffocation with the musk of pretence. The colour on her cheek is part paint, part mock-modesty.
-- Mary Cowden Clarke, The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines

Holding a candle dramatically high, wrapped in a very shabby old housegown, with some kind of fard on her cheeks and her grey hair screwed up in short plaits above her ears, she had a rather ridiculous air...
-- Phyllis Bentley, Love and Money

Fard comes from the Old Low Franconian word farwiđon meaning "to dye or colour." In the Old French it became farder meaning "to apply makeup."

Thanks to: http://www.dictionary.com/