The difference between dodging and burning. (Seriously.)

Okay, so I knew that, in photo editors, a dodge and burn tool made areas of an image lighter and darker. I also knew that the terminology somehow came from the film and paper photography. But how? I tried imagining what tool one would use to "burn" a paper-based photo. Something hot that... leaves dark burn marks on paper? No, seriously, I went as far as imagining that as a plausible etymology.

And because I never understood what dodging and burning meant in a darkroom, I could never remember which meant which. Did dodging lighten or did burning darken? In my reasoning above, that would be the case.

Well, it all came together today, no thanks to my active imagination. I learned, upon landing on the Wikipedia darkroom page in search of some unrelated info, that dodging is an act of selectively reducing exposure of a portion of the image, and burning, by contrast, is an act of increasing or prolonging the exposure. You "dodge", as in "avoid", exposure of one area and "burn" another area with extra light. How simple is that? I had done both many times.

And as far as the tools - the use of the little pen-shaped "dodge and burn" tool in photo editing software must have thrown me off and sent my thinking in a wrong direction.  What you use to dodge and burn prints in a darkroom is your hands.

At least for a 4 x 6 print you would.