the.com/shave
Daily combat against your own face, waged with a blade and blind optimism.
means To cut away hair close to the skin with a sharp blade, usually your own stubble, usually before you've had coffee.
from From Old English 'sceafan,' meaning to scrape or scratch — the same ancient root gives us 'shabby' and 'scab,' a lineup that should tell you something about what shaving has always really been: controlled scraping. It traces back further to a prehistoric Germanic root tied to cutting and carving, the same deep root that produced 'shovel' and 'sheave.' So before it meant grooming, it meant scraping something raw off a surface — your face just happened to be the surface.
- origin
- shave shares root with sharp and scab
- grain rule
- shaving against it causes most razor burn
- blade life
- dulls fastest from drying wet, not cutting
- close shave idiom
- from barbers nicking skin, now means near-miss