tarnish

Other forms of tarnish

plural

tarnishes·

past tense

tarnished·

present participle

tarnishing·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about tarnish

What does tarnish mean?

tarnish means "discoloration of metal surface caused by oxidation". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in tarnish?

tarnish has 2 syllables: tar-nish. The stress falls on "tar". In IPA it is /ˈtɑɹnɪʃ/.

What is another word for tarnish?

Close synonyms include stain, maculate, sully, defile. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is tarnish a common word?

tarnish is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.