1.
hair conditioner; rinse
A hair care product applied after shampooing to smooth, soften, and detangle hair. From English 'rinse.'
A loanword from English "rinse," but in Japanese it refers specifically to hair conditioner — not the act of rinsing with water. This is a classic example of Japanese-English semantic shift.
Common collocations
- リンスを使う: to use conditioner
- リンスをつける: to apply conditioner
- シャンプー＆リンス: shampoo and conditioner
- リンスインシャンプー: 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner
Similar words
- コンディショナー: conditioner — increasingly used as a more modern alternative to リンス; products marketed as コンディショナー may have slightly different formulations
- トリートメント: treatment — a deeper conditioning product that penetrates the hair shaft, used for more intensive care
Etymology
From English "rinse." In English, "rinse" means to wash lightly with water, but in Japanese the word shifted to mean the conditioning product itself.