midshave

English

Etymology

From mid- +‎ shave.

Adverb

midshave (not comparable)

1. During a shave.
   • 1998, Rebecca Poole Forée, Northern California Best Places: Restaurants, Lodgings, and Touring, Seattle, Wash.: Sasquatch Books, →ISBN, page 109:

     Rumors abound of a ghost who haunts the third dining room, which purportedly was once a barber shop where a local mobster was cut down midshave.

   • 2004, Peter Robinson, “Going Back”, in The Price of Love and Other Stories, New York, N.Y.: William Morrow, published 2010, →ISBN, page 44:

     “What did he say? The barber.” / “Not a word. He stopped midshave, straight-blade razor in his hand, and he went to his cabinet and got them for me. […]”

   • 2004, Harriet Baskas, Washington Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff, Guilford, Conn.: The Globe Pequot Press, →ISBN, page 205:

     There was just one slight wrinkle: The best-known justice of the peace was also the town barber. That meant that barbershop customers were often pressed into service as witnesses to a short-notice marriage ceremony, sometimes standing up for a couple midshave.

   • 2008, Beth Lisick, Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Ten Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone, New York, N.Y.: William Morrow, →ISBN, page 24:

     “Okay,” I say, “I guess we can put it on the credit card, but I can’t take it in tomorrow morning because I have a banana job.” / This stops him midshave.

   • 2017, Theo Emery, Hellfire Boys: The Birth of the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service and the Race for the World’s Deadliest Weapons, New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 325:

     And then at 1:00 a.m., as if a switch had been flipped, the night turned to a sea of flame. Addison stood midshave, transfixed by the sight.

   • 2017, Hirohiko Araki [pseudonym; Toshiyuki Araki], translated by Nathan A. Collins, Manga in Theory and Practice: The Craft of Creating Manga, San Francisco, Calif.: Viz Media, →ISBN, page 32:

     I needed to quickly establish what kind of character the gunman was. To do so, I came up with a scene in a barbershop, where an enemy attacks the main character midshave.

   • 2017, Todd Gilmour, Karyn Rae, The 51st State: State of Affairs, [Okatie, S.C.]: Karyn Rae Publishing, →ISBN, pages 159–160:

     Dom Denario caught Cotton’s eye in the reflection of the pocket-sized mirror that hung on the cinderblock wall. A pit-stained, stretched-out undershirt struggled to contain his fat belly (only doing so with the help of black suspenders), while globs of shaving cream adhered to his face like melted marshmallows. He stopped what he was doing, midshave.

   • 2017, T.J. Kline, chapter 17, in The Radcliffes, New York, N.Y.: Grand Central Publishing, →ISBN, page 75:

     THE TENTATIVE KNOCK on his door made Gabe pause, midshave.

Noun

midshave (uncountable)

1. A point in time during a shave.
   • 1969 November 1, Business Week, pages 63–64; republished in “The War That Business Must Win”, in Patrick E. Connor, compiler, Dimensions in Modern Management, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974, →ISBN, page 72:

     You roll out of bed, ready for a fresh, new day. But it’s the same miserable day it was yesterday. Your electric razor dies in midshave because of a power failure.

   • 1992, Christine Dorsey, Kansas Kiss, New York, N.Y.: Zebra Books, →ISBN, page 143:

     Her eyes strayed across the flat landscape and her fingers stilled, knife in midshave down a potato.

   • 1996, Joyce Milton, Tramp: The Life of Charlie Chaplin, New York, N.Y.: HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 100:

     In Amarillo, Texas, he was hustled from his compartment in midshave, his face still decorated with puffs of lather, and found himself face to face with the entire town, which had gathered to watch him eat a sandwich and drink a Coca-Cola with the mayor.

   • 1998, Kieran Scott, Kiss and Tell, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, →ISBN, page 112:

     “What’s your problem, Neill?” Will asked, stopping in midshave. “You’ve never seen a guy with facial hair before?”

   • 2008, Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains, New York, N.Y.: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, published 2010, →ISBN, page 137:

     The barber scraped off another stripe of soap and whiskers. “Take her to Jamison,” the colonel said. / “No,” I said. / The barber froze in midshave, and the colonel opened his eyes.

   • 2010, Jules Witcover, Joe Biden: A Life of Trial and Redemption, New York, N.Y.: William Morrow, →ISBN, page 66:

     Dressed in his shorts and in midshave, he opened the door and admitted Henry Topel and Bert Carvel, who had already rebuffed the efforts of Biden and the other young Democrats to get him to run against Boggs.

   • 2011 winter, David Greenberg, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Image of Presidential Activism”, in The Image (Social Research: An International Quarterly; volume 78, number 4), New York, N.Y.: The New School for Social Research, →ISBN, page 1074:

     Frequently, in midshave, the excitable president would spring out of his armchair, lather flying off his face, to make a point.