Prinking

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Grooming and decorating oneself carefully, often in a fussy or vain way, before going out or appearing in public
2. Making oneself look smarter or more attractive through careful adjustment of clothes, hair, and appearance
3. Fussing over one's appearance by arranging dress and ornament with particular attention to detail

Etymology: The verb "prink" meant "to wink" long before it meant "to dress up." Its Middle English form, "prinken," came from the Old English noun "princ," meaning a wink, so the earliest sense was a quick movement of the eye. How the word swung from a flicker of the eyelid to fussing over one's appearance is not fully settled. Some scholars suspect it was altered under the influence of "primp," or merged with a separate verb "prank," meaning to deck out or adorn, which also gave rise to the Middle Dutch "prinken" and German "Prunk," both meaning show or splendour. Because two unrelated roots seem to have collided, the modern sense of preening and decorating oneself is probably the product of that blending rather than a straight line from the eyelid. The source's most amusing twist is a tongue-in-cheek contraction of "pre-drink," the drinks taken before going out, but that is a modern folk explanation rather than the true history. "Prinking" is the present participle of "prink," so it simply describes the act of primping in progress.

Synonyms: preen, primp, groom, spruce up