Definition of "powdering" [pow•der•ing]

• Present participle of powder. (verb)
• A patch or application of powder. (noun)

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• "In houses of any pretension was a small room set apart for the purpose, and it was known as the powdering-room."
• "They keep silent about it as though it were a kind of powdering or painting."
• "Another Committee of Fourteen investigator in 1914 observed the loose behavior of women workers in a restaurant: “They were putting on their aprons, combing their hair, powdering their noses, . . . all the while tossing back and forth to each other, apparently in a spirit of good-natured comradeship, the most vile epithets that I had ever heard emerge from the lips of a human being.”"