GILDING

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does gilding mean? 

• GILDING (noun)
  The noun GILDING has 1 sense:

1. a coating of gold or of something that looks like gold

  Familiarity information: GILDING used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• GILDING (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A coating of gold or of something that looks like gold

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

gilding; gilt

Hypernyms ("gilding" is a kind of...):

coat; coating (a thin layer covering something)

Derivation:

gild (decorate with, or as if with, gold leaf or liquid gold)

 Context examples 

Varnish and gilding hide many stains.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Perhaps Meg felt, without understanding why, that they were not particularly cultivated or intelligent people, and that all their gilding could not quite conceal the ordinary material of which they were made.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

The general, perceiving how her eye was employed, began to talk of the smallness of the room and simplicity of the furniture, where everything, being for daily use, pretended only to comfort, etc.; flattering himself, however, that there were some apartments in the Abbey not unworthy her notice—and was proceeding to mention the costly gilding of one in particular, when, taking out his watch, he stopped short to pronounce it with surprise within twenty minutes of five!

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Some time in the afternoon I raised my head, and looking round and seeing the western sun gilding the sign of its decline on the wall, I asked, "What am I to do?" But the answer my mind gave—"Leave Thornfield at once"—was so prompt, so dread, that I stopped my ears.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The whole party rose accordingly, and under Mrs. Rushworth's guidance were shewn through a number of rooms, all lofty, and many large, and amply furnished in the taste of fifty years back, with shining floors, solid mahogany, rich damask, marble, gilding, and carving, each handsome in its way.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

It may hate him who dares to scrutinise and expose—to rase the gilding, and show base metal under it—to penetrate the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The glamour of inexperience is over your eyes, he answered; and you see it through a charmed medium: you cannot discern that the gilding is slime and the silk draperies cobwebs; that the marble is sordid slate, and the polished woods mere refuse chips and scaly bark.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)