makeup

Pluralmakeups

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   Cosmetics: tinted and other preparations put on the face or body to change the way it looks.

   The actress sat for an hour while artists applied her makeup.

   Stage performers wear heavy makeup so their features read from the back row.

   Similarcosmetics, maquillage

   Note

   English borrowed a meaning here rather than a word. The cosmetic sense was modeled on French maquillage, from maquiller, 'to make up, fabricate', and grafted onto the existing English makeup. Maquillage itself survives in English as a synonym. In everyday use the noun is usually a mass noun: you wear makeup, or a lot of makeup, rather than counting makeups.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The combination of parts or materials from which something is formed.

   Scientists examined the chemical makeup of the meteorite fragment.

   The makeup of the committee shifted after the election.

   Similarcomposition, structure, constitution

   Note

   The noun grew out of the phrasal verb make up in its sense of 'to compose': what a thing's parts make up is its makeup. It sits comfortably beside size, as in Bennett Fairorth's 'the size and makeup of Congress', and it stretches easily from machines and minerals to committees and legislatures. Written solid, it is the noun; the verb is normally two words.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   An examination offered to students so they can re-attempt material they missed or failed the first time.

   Because he was hospitalized during finals, the professor scheduled a makeup for him.

   Students who provide a doctor's note may sign up for a makeup.

   Similarretake, retest, resit

   Note

   Students take a makeup, and teachers give or schedule one. The word covers both the student who failed and the one who simply missed the date. In Tayari Jones's Silver Sparrow (2020), a student pleads, 'Will I get a chance to take a makeup? My mother paid for the exam.' The noun echoes the verb: you make up missed work by sitting the makeup.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   Material supplied to replace the amount that has been used up or lost in a process.

   Operators continuously feed makeup into the boiler to replace evaporated water.

   The system draws makeup from a reservoir whenever the fluid level drops.

   Note

   In plant and equipment work, the word usually stands before another noun: makeup water, a makeup supply, a makeup line. It names whatever is fed into a circuit to replace losses from evaporation, leakage, blowdown or consumption. Whitman, Johnson and Tomczyk's Refrigeration & Air Conditioning (2005) shows the typical mechanism: a float drops with the water level and opens the valve to the makeup water supply.

5. 5
   verb

   Alternative form of make up. As a verb, the one-word spelling is nonstandard and usually treated as an error.

   Professional stylists makeup the cast before each performance.

   They wanted to makeup the children as woodland creatures for the school play.

   Note

   Here the solid noun is pressed into service as a verb, and its endings show the strain: makeuped or makeupped for the past, makeuping or makeupping for the participle. Writers who use it lean toward the doubled p, as in Lou Manfredo's 'powdering, combing, and makeupping'. It carries only the cosmetic meaning, borrowed back from the cosmetics noun. For composing or inventing, use the two-word make up.

6. 6
   noununcountable

   An amount distributed from a NIMCRUT's income in later years to compensate beneficiaries for a shortfall in an earlier year.

   When the trust's income rebounded, the trustee distributed a makeup for the prior deficit.

   The agreement allows a makeup in any year the trust earns more than its required payout.

   Note

   Trust law built this word into a name. NIMCRUT stands for net income makeup charitable remainder unitrust. In a lean year, such a trust pays out only what it actually earned, and the unpaid balance is carried forward. When later earnings exceed the required unitrust amount, the surplus goes to the beneficiaries as the makeup, settling the earlier shortfall.

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