Meaning & use
goatee beard
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Meaning
nouncountable
A small beard on the chin only, sometimes joined to a mustache, with the cheeks shaved.
Grammar: Countable, though goatee alone is more common; the fuller phrase goatee beard is casual and slightly redundant.
Patterns
- grow a goatee beard
- shave a goatee beard
- a goatee beard and mustache
He grew a goatee beard after years of being clean-shaven.
She trimmed his goatee beard before the graduation photos.
Word forms
| plural | goatee beards |
|---|
Common combinations
- neatly trimmed goatee beard
- A neatly trimmed goatee beard gave his round face a sharper outline.
- patchy goatee beard
- At seventeen, he complained that his patchy goatee beard looked more like dirt than hair.
- shave off a goatee beard
- He shaved off the goatee beard when it started graying faster than his hair.
Synonyms and how they differ
- chin beard
- Describes location but is less specific; a goatee is a particular small chin style.
- Van Dyke
- A style with a mustache and chin beard that are usually separated, not one connected beard.
Opposites
Commonly confused: goatee beard or goatee?
goatee beard vs goatee
Goatee alone already means chin hair, so goatee beard repeats the idea; learners should prefer goatee in neutral writing.
Practice
He shaved his cheeks and neck but left a small strip of hair on his chin—a ____.
Choose one answer.
Hair only on the chin matches a goatee beard. A full beard covers more of the face, while guarantor and deposition belong to finance/law, not grooming.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “goatee beard”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.