Other forms: polished; polishing; polishes
When you polish something, you rub and buff it until it shines. You might need to polish your reading glasses from time to time.
You might polish your wooden coffee table with a cloth or polish beach stones until they gleam. Polish is also a noun, meaning either the spray you use to shine up your furniture or the shininess itself: "The polish on that desk is unbelievable — I can almost see my reflection in it!" There is also a figurative kind of polish, a sort of elegance or clarity you might see in well-edited writing or a fashionable woman sliding into a taxi.