synonyms - How can I describe lips which are wearing lipstick?


How can I briefly communicate that a character's lips have lipstick on them?


I can't say something like "lipstick covered lips", because using "lips" twice sounds awkward. I considered "gloss covered lips", but lip gloss and lipstick aren't quite the same thing, and in my opinion have different connotations (lipstick I think of as slightly "classier" than lip gloss). Painted? I thought maybe just "red", or "ruby red", but that might be unclear (and not as emotionally neutral as just "had lipstick on them").


This is for prose fiction.


Sorry if this question is too broad, I don't use this SE often. Feel free to close if so.



Answer



Not a very common word, I’d say, but the easiest and most obvious choice would be to simply turn ‘lipstick’ into a verb through zero-derivation, and then using the past participle of that verb:


Her lipsticked lips were pursed.


Googling “lipsticked lips” yields about 15,000 hits, which isn’t much, but enough to show that this word has been invented and used before. More tellingly, the OED has a subentry for it as well.


(Google also reveals that I am not the first to have thought quippingly that the past participle of ‘to lipstick’ really ought to be lipstuck. I’d not suggest using that, though.)


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