noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of paintbrush
Explanation
The long-handled tool with bristles that artists use for dabbing color onto canvas is a paintbrush. If you want to tint your walls in shades of pink, you'll also need a paintbrush. Although some painters have famously splattered, dripped, rolled, and otherwise creatively applied paint to a canvas, the vast majority of them use paintbrushes. The type of paintbrush a housepainter uses has a shorter handle and wider bristles, but its purpose is the same: to smoothly and precisely apply paint to a surface. Whether your medium is watercolors, oil paints, or deck stain, your paintbrush will have soft bristles and a wooden or plastic handle.
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:
Fahmy painted a Keith Haring-style black-and-white mural at the top of the stairs and continued onto the second-floor walls using a paintbrush taped to a broomstick.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 21, 2026
Equally dismissive of his own output, Julian hasn’t wielded a paintbrush in decades.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 9, 2026
Sitting cross-legged on a red carpet, artist Mohammad Younes Qane uses an ultra-fine paintbrush to trace details such as a horse's mane or the beads of a necklace.
From Barron's ● Feb. 4, 2026
But she has a lot of work to do before she can safely dig out the paintbrush.
From BBC ● Apr. 3, 2025
Together we picked flowers, paintbrush and clover and prairie violets.
From "Sarah, Plain and Tall" by Patricia MacLachlan
The men took different roles as Ukrainian civilians donned camouflage to join the fight: Leontyev became a weapons instructor and Stefanov swapped his paintbrushes for a camera.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 6, 2025
Armed with their paintbrushes and toolkits, lifelong fans of Kettering Town are busy preparing their 3,000-capacity ground ready for next month's televised FA Cup clash.
From BBC ● Nov. 16, 2024
That’s in no more than half an hour of walking around, without trowels and paintbrushes.
From Science Magazine ● Nov. 30, 2023
Those are almost always pure black, with paint squeezed onto huge canvases, then scraped at with knives and caressed with paintbrushes to a quasi-sculptural degree.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 26, 2022
“Besides, my daughters have no interest in art. I never got to teach them anything about paintbrushes or oils. This will be fun for me.”
From "Starfish" by Akemi Dawn Bowman
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.
