Online Beauty Lingo for Beginners

So many words that are thrown around on forums, blogs, and makeup tutorials can leave you scratching your head. Here are a some explanations that will help you better understand your favorite makeup guru.

BEAUTY LINGO

1. Tightlining

When you are tightlining, you are lining the area of skin between your eye and your lashes on your top lid to make your lashes appear fuller. This is often difficult because you are touching your inner eyelid skin while lining the skin.

2. Waterline

The skin between your eye and your bottom lashes.

3. Contouring

Creating depth to your face by applying a darker color to the low points of your face and blending it (sides of the bridge of your nose, hollows of your cheeks, temples on the side of your face, under your bottom lip, below your jawline).

4. Highlighting

Also creating depth to your face by applying a lighter color to the high points of your face and blending it (center of your forehead, bridge of your nose, above your cheek bone, chin).

5. Cut-Crease

An eye look in which you create a sharp line across the crease fold of your eyelid and pull that color upward to create a visual separation between the lower and upper parts of the lid.

6. Lipstick Feathering

Lip color that bleeds into the tiny lines around your mouth. As you age, the fine lines become more apparent, making it easier for your lip color to end up beyond your lip line.

7. Haul

A collective showing of items you have purchased.

8. Swatch

An example of a product typically placed on skin to show its true color and/or texture.

ABBREVIATIONS

BA: Beauty Advisor
BC: Beauty Consultant
CCO: Cosmetics Company Outlet
DC/DC'ED: Discontinued
Dupe: Duplicate
E/L: Eye Liner
EOTD: Eye of the Day
E/S: Eye Shadow
FOTD: Face of the Day
FOTN: Face of the Night
FX: Special Effects Makeup
L/L: Lip Liner
L/S: Lipstick
MUA: Makeup Artist
P/P: Paint Pot