1790–1800; < Arabic kohl, variant of kuhl. See alcohol
Kohl is a dark powder that's used as eye makeup. When you dress up for a fancy event, you might add a dramatic line of kohl along the top of your eyelid. Kohl is an especially familiar cosmetic in South Asia, the Middle East, and various parts of Africa. It's commonly associated with India, where it's used by women, as well as some men and children. Kohl is worn in several Indian states as part of religious festivals, and in others it's frequently applied to babies' eyes. Historians have traced kohl back at least as far as 3100 BCE, when it was applied to the eyes of Egyptian queens.
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Margaret Thatcher died in 2013, Helmut Kohl in 2017 and Mikhail Gorbachev in 2022.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 13, 2026
Kohl realized: If the winds turn, this fire could go anywhere.
From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 25, 2025
Sen. Herb Kohl, also a multimillionaire, whose slogan was “Nobody’s Senator but Yours.”
From Seattle Times • Mar. 15, 2024
Regrettably, both Mitterrand and Kohl are among the most dead people on the planet.
From Slate • Feb. 10, 2024
Before that fateful day in the principal’s office with Kohl Whitlock, Rowan hadn’t even known anyone who died.
From "Scythe" by Neal Shusterman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
