mustache
Americannoun
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mustaches
plural
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the hair growing on the upper lip
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such hair on men, allowed to grow without shaving, and often trimmed in any of various shapes.
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hairs or bristles growing near the mouth of an animal.
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a stripe of color, or elongated feathers, suggestive of a mustache on the side of the head of a bird.
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something resembling a mustache, as food or drink adhering to the upper lip.
a mustache of milk.
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of mustache
1575–85; < Middle French moustache < Italian mostaccio; see mustachio
Explanation
A mustache is hair that grows between a person's nose and mouth. Some mustaches are as thin as a pencil line, while others are bushy and full. Salvador Dali was known for his long, curled mustache. If you're trying to grow a mustache, you might start by shaving all your facial hair except the strands that grow above your upper lip. When your mustache becomes luxuriant and ample, you can trim it with scissors and style it with mustache wax. The word mustache comes from the French moustache, which has a Greek root, mystax, "upper lip."
Vocabulary lists containing mustache
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
A charismatic speaker with a white mustache, Bhagwat raised laughs with the Chicago audience by saying Hindus don’t want to dominate; instead, he said, “We have to learn to work together separately.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026
Yet in the modern era, no American president has gone about in mustache or beard.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026
Last time I met with an old friend I noted the disappearance of his goatee and mustache.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026
“So the mustache was kind of a reminder of where I came from.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 26, 2026
“The ship nudged an iceberg!” said an old man with a bushy mustache.
From "I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic, 1912" by Lauren Tarshis
In something of an irony, Lotus’s historic approach to cornering and traction management—crossed up, tail out, mustaches ablaze—looks a lot like what the kids call drifting.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 25, 2026
Meanwhile, one end of the observation car had been filled by several women in white bonnets, joined by men with straw hats, footlong beards and no mustaches.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 9, 2025
Just that, bellowed in capital letters evoking images of very self-assured men sporting handlebar mustaches.
From Salon ● Jun. 19, 2025
Some of the women donned fake mustaches that mimicked Rome’s as they all toyed with possible explanations for what they had found.
From Science Magazine ● Jun. 6, 2024
I can remember drawing such mustaches myself, and the spite that went into them, the desire to ridicule, to deflate, and the feeling of power.
From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood
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.
