Is Skin Care Two Words

Ways to Describe Skin

(Notice fifty-fifty more words in The Writer's Body Lexicon.)

Picking the perfect adjective saves words and makes writing leap off the page. These lists contain more than than 300 adjectives to depict skin color, tone, complexion, and texture. Some might be accounted cliché, only you can leverage them every bit springboards.

Permit's consider ivory, a hackneyed word for modifying skin. What looks like ivory? Pianoforte keys. Can y'all use pianoforte keys for a direct description? How about: Julianne flounced into the parlor, her flawless pare shimmering equally white as the keys on the thousand piano in the middle of the room.

Do you lot motion picture a fair-skinned, affluent woman who might have musical talent or at least the desire to announced as though she does? Although the piano keys don't shimmer, her skin does. The comparison between pare and keys hints that the keys are shiny. Either Julianne keeps them polished, or she spends considerable time playing. If she doesn't play, mayhap she strokes the keys and daydreams about a musician who jilted her.

Another cliché is babe-soft skin. Consider this judgement: Jordan'due south tiny fingers stroked his mother's chest, a breast with skin every bit soft as his own.

Do you envision a infant? The sentence doesn't say Jordan is in his mother's arms, just that's probably what you lot see. Even though the word baby is never used, you sense the softness of the mother's pare.

You lot can too benefit from the following lists of adjectives by consulting them in conjunction with your favorite thesauruses.

Consider blotchy.

Microsoft Word provides these suggestions: mottled, blemished, marked, spotty, spotted, dappled, discolored, freckled, reddened, and red.

Google brings upward the following recommendations: mottled, dappled, blotched, spotty, spotted, smudged, marked, erratic, irregular, patchy, and splotchy.

A search at lexicon.reverso.net provides these alternatives: blemished, macular, patchy, reddened, scurvy, spotty, and uneven.

Thesaurus.reference.com presents a unlike list: mottled and spotted. Moving down the folio to the mottled heading brings upwardly the following adjectives: blotchy, checkered, dappled, flecked, freckled, maculate, streaked, tabby, variegated, marbled, motley, and piebald. More suggestions appear under additional headings.

Imagine what you could do with tabby and piebald, words that commonly describe cats and horses. What about other animals? Crocodiles, elephants, leopards, giraffes — they all have different textures and patterns of skin or spots, with personalities that could match those of your protagonists.

I have included a few words that refer to odour. Let your imagination run wild. A protagonist'due south peel could scent like grease, rose petals, beer, garlic, infant shampoo, or licorice. Investigate the surroundings and occupations of your characters to add advisable scents. Likewise with flavor. I didn't include any taste words, but consider the possibilities, peculiarly if yous're writing a romance novel.

About of these words could be applied to specific body parts rather than skin. For example:

Raw knees
Veined hands
Blistered face
Cottage-cheese thighs
Patchy chest
Sunburnt toes
Reptilian elbows

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Now without further ado, I nowadays the lists.

Color /Tone

A and B
alabaster, albino, almond, amber, anemic, apricot, ashen, beige, bisque, black, blanched, anemic, blue-tinged, blushing, brick-colored, bronze, brown, burnt, butterscotch, buttery

C
café-au-lait, caramel, cedar, chalky, charcoal, chestnut, chocolate, cinnamon, java-colored, colorless, copper, coral, cream-colored, creamy

D to Thousand
dark, dappled, dusky, ebony, espresso, fair, fawn, fiery, florid, flushed, flushing, freckled, ghostly, ginger, gold, granite-grey, grey, dark-green

I to O
ivory, jaundiced, lily-white, liver-spotted, mahogany, mango, milk-white, milky, mottled, ochre, olive

P to R
painted, stake, pallid, viscous, peaches-and-foam, peach-colored, pearly, pink, porcelain, red, reddened, rose-brown, rosy, rouged, rubicund, ruddy, russet

S and T
sallow, sand-colored, sepia, shock-white, sienna, snowy, sooty, sorrel, spotted, sunny, sunburnt, swarthy, tan, tanned, tarnished, taupe, tawny, teak, terracotta, toffee

U to Y
umber, vanilla, wan, washed-out, waxen, whitey, yellowish