Vocabulary     

What does wash mean?

Definitions for wash
wɒʃ, wɔʃwash

This dictionary definitions page includes all the possible meanings, example usage and translations of the word wash.

Princeton's WordNet

  1. washnoun

    a thin coat of water-base paint

  2. wash, washing, lavationnoun

    the work of cleansing (usually with soap and water)

  3. wash, dry washnoun

    the dry bed of an intermittent stream (as at the bottom of a canyon)

  4. washout, washnoun

    the erosive process of washing away soil or gravel by water (as from a roadway)

    "from the house they watched the washout of their newly seeded lawn by the water"

  5. slipstream, airstream, race, backwash, washnoun

    the flow of air that is driven backwards by an aircraft propeller

  6. wash, wash drawingnoun

    a watercolor made by applying a series of monochrome washes one over the other

  7. laundry, wash, washing, washablesnoun

    garments or white goods that can be cleaned by laundering

  8. washverb

    any enterprise in which losses and gains cancel out

    "at the end of the year the accounting department showed that it was a wash"

  9. wash, rinseverb

    clean with some chemical process

  10. wash, laveverb

    cleanse (one's body) with soap and water

  11. wash, launderverb

    cleanse with a cleaning agent, such as soap, and water

    "Wash the towels, please!"

  12. washverb

    move by or as if by water

    "The swollen river washed away the footbridge"

  13. washverb

    be capable of being washed

    "Does this material wash?"

  14. washverb

    admit to testing or proof

    "This silly excuse won't wash in traffic court"

  15. washverb

    separate dirt or gravel from (precious minerals)

  16. washverb

    apply a thin coating of paint, metal, etc., to

  17. wash, wash out, wash off, wash awayverb

    remove by the application of water or other liquid and soap or some other cleaning agent

    "he washed the dirt from his coat"; "The nurse washed away the blood"; "Can you wash away the spots on the windows?"; "he managed to wash out the stains"

  18. washverb

    form by erosion

    "The river washed a ravine into the mountainside"

  19. moisten, wash, dampenverb

    make moist

    "The dew moistened the meadows"

  20. lave, lap, washverb

    wash or flow against

    "the waves laved the shore"

  21. washverb

    to cleanse (itself or another animal) by licking

    "The cat washes several times a day"

GCIDE

  1. Washnoun

    an action or situation in which the gains and losses are equal, or closely compensate each other.

  2. Washnoun

    (Aeronautics) the disturbance of the air left behind in the wake of a moving airplane or one of its parts.

  3. Washnoun

    A thin coat of metal applied in a liquid form on any object, for beauty or preservation; -- called also washing.

Wiktionary

  1. washnoun

    The process or an instance of washing or being washed by water or other liquid.

  2. washnoun

    A liquid used for washing.

  3. washnoun

    The quantity of clothes washed at a time.

    There's a lot in that wash, maybe you should separate them in half.

  4. washnoun

    A smooth and translucent painting created using a paintbrush holding a large amount of solvent and a small amount of paint.

  5. washnoun

    The sound of breaking of the seas, e.g., on the shore.

    I could hear the wash of the wave.

  6. washnoun

    The wake of a moving ship.

  7. washnoun

    The turbulence left in the air by a moving airplane.

  8. washnoun

    A lotion or other liquid with medicinal or hygienic properties.

  9. washnoun

    Ground washed away to the sea or a river.

  10. washverb

    To clean with water.

  11. washverb

    To move by the force of water in motion

    The flood washed away houses.

  12. washverb

    To separate valuable material (such as gold) from worthless material by the action of flowing water.

  13. washverb

    To clean oneself with water.

    I wash every morning after getting up.

  14. washverb

    (intransitive) To be eroded or carried away by the action of water.

  15. washnoun

    A shallow body of water.

  16. washnoun

    In arid and semi-arid regions, the normally dry bed of an intermittent or ephemeral stream; an arroyo; wadi

  17. washnoun

    Something where no progress is made, where nothing changes.

    His first week at the new job was a wash, since he spent so much time learning the system instead of using it.

  18. Etymology: From washen, waschen, weschen, from wascan, wæscan, from waskanan, from wod-. Cognate with Dutch wassen, wasschen, German waschen, vaske, vaska, vaska.

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary

  1. Washnoun

    Etymology: from the verb.

    The wash of pastures, fields, commons, and roads, where rain-water hath a long time settled, is of great advantage to all land. John Mortimer, Husbandry.

    Full thirty times hath Phœbus car gone round
    Neptune’s salt wash, and Tellus’ orb’d ground. William Shakespeare.

    The best part of my power
    Were in the washes all unwarily
    Devoured by the unexpected flood. William Shakespeare, King John.

    Try whether children may not have some wash to make their teeth better and stronger. Francis Bacon, Natural History.

    They paint and patch their imperfections
    Of intellectual complections,
    And daub their tempers o’er with washes,
    As artificial as their faces. Hudibras.

    He tried all manner of washes to bring him to a better complexion; but there was no good to be done. Roger L'Estrange.

    None are welcome to such, but those who speak paint and wash; for that is the thing they love; and no wonder, since it is the thing they need. Robert South, Sermons.

    To steal from rainbows, ere they drop in show’rs,
    A brighter wash. Alexander Pope, Rape of the Lock.

    Here gallypots and vials plac’d,
    Some fill’d with washes, some with paste. Jonathan Swift.

    Imagination stamps signification upon his face, and tells the people he is to go for so much, who oftentimes, being deceived by the wash, never examine the metal, but take him upon content. Collier.

    The wretched, bloody, and usurping boar,
    That spoil’d your summer-fields and fruitful vines,
    Swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough
    In your embowell’d bosoms. William Shakespeare, Richard III.

  2. To WASHverb

    Etymology: wascan , Saxon; wasschen, Dutch.

    How fain, like Pilate, would I wash my hands
    Of this most grievous guilty murther done! William Shakespeare, R. III.

    Look, how she rubs her hands.
    ———— It is an accustom’d action with her to seem thus washing her hands. William Shakespeare, Macbeth.

    Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. Ps. li. 2.

    Thou didst wash thyself. Ez. xxiii. 40.

    Shall he that gives fire to the train pretend to wash his hands of the hurt that is done by the playing of the mine? Roger L'Estrange, Fables.

    Be baptized, and wash away thy sins. Acts xxii. 16.

    Sins of irreligion must still be so accounted for as to crave pardon, and be washed off by repentance. Taylor.

    Recollect the things you have heard, that they may not be washed all away from the mind by a torrent of other engagements. Isaac Watts, Improvement of the Mind.

    To wash over a coarse or insignificant meaning, is to counterfeit nature’s coin. Jeremy Collier, of the Aspect.

  3. To Washverb

    I will go wash;
    And when my face is fair, you shall perceive
    Whether I blush or no. William Shakespeare, Coriolanus.

    Wash and be clean. 2 Kings v. 13.

    Are not the rivers of Damascus better than all the waters of Israel? May I not wash in them? 2 Kings v. 12.

    Let each becalm his troubled breast,
    Wash and partake serene the friendly feast. Alexander Pope, Odyssey.

    She can wash and scour.
    —— A special virtue; for then she need not be washed and scoured. William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Wikipedia

  1. WASH

    WASH (or Watsan, WaSH) is an acronym that stands for "water, sanitation and hygiene". It is used widely by non-governmental organizations and aid agencies in developing countries. The purposes of providing access to WASH services include achieving public health gains, improving human dignity in the case of sanitation, implementing the human right to water and sanitation, reducing the burden of collecting drinking water for women, reducing risks of violence against women, improving education and health outcomes at schools and health facilities, and reducing water pollution. Access to WASH services is also an important component of water security. Universal, affordable and sustainable access to WASH is a key issue within international development and is the focus of the first two targets of Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6). Targets 6.1 and 6.2 aim at equitable and accessible water and sanitation for all. In 2017, it was estimated that 2.3 billion people live without basic sanitation facilities and 844 million people live without access to safe and clean drinking water.The WASH-attributable burden of disease and injuries has been studied in depth. Typical diseases and conditions associated with lack of WASH include diarrhea, malnutrition and stunting, in addition to neglected tropical diseases. Lack of WASH poses additional health risks for women, for example during pregnancy, or in connection with menstrual hygiene management. Lack of sanitation contributes to about 700,000 child deaths every year due to diarrhea, mainly in developing countries. Chronic diarrhea can have long-term negative effects on children, in terms of both physical and cognitive development. Still, collecting precise scientific evidence regarding health outcomes that result from improved access to WASH is difficult due to a range of complicating factors. Scholars suggest a need for longer-term studies of technology efficacy, greater analysis of sanitation interventions, and studies of combined effects from multiple interventions in order to better analyze WASH health outcomes.Access to WASH needs to be provided at the household level but also in non-household settings like schools, healthcare facilities, workplaces (including prisons), temporary use settings, mass gatherings, and for dislocated populations. In schools, group handwashing facilities and behaviors are a promising approach to improve hygiene. Lack of WASH facilities at schools can prevent students (especially girls) from attending school, reducing their educational achievements and future work productivity. Challenges for providing WASH services include providing services to urban slums, failures of WASH systems (e.g. leaking water distribution systems), water pollution and the impacts of climate change. Planning approaches for better, more reliable and equitable access to WASH include: National WASH plans and monitoring (including gender mainstreaming), integrated water resources management (IWRM) and, more recently, improving climate resilience of WASH services. Adaptive capacity in water management systems can help to absorb some of the impacts of climate-related events and increase climate resilience.: 25  Stakeholders at various scales, i.e. from small urban utilities to national governments, need to have access to reliable information which details regional climate and climate change.

ChatGPT

  1. wash

    Wash refers to the act or process of cleaning something, typically with water and/or some kind of detergent or soap. This can apply to various contexts such as washing clothes, dishes, or one's body. It may also refer to the removal or elimination of unwanted substances or impurities. Additionally, in a geographical context, 'wash' can mean a dry or shallow streambed.

Webster Dictionary

  1. Washverb

    to cleanse by ablution, or dipping or rubbing in water; to apply water or other liquid to for the purpose of cleansing; to scrub with water, etc., or as with water; as, to wash the hands or body; to wash garments; to wash sheep or wool; to wash the pavement or floor; to wash the bark of trees

  2. Washverb

    to cover with water or any liquid; to wet; to fall on and moisten; hence, to overflow or dash against; as, waves wash the shore

  3. Washverb

    to waste or abrade by the force of water in motion; as, heavy rains wash a road or an embankment

  4. Washverb

    to remove by washing to take away by, or as by, the action of water; to drag or draw off as by the tide; -- often with away, off, out, etc.; as, to wash dirt from the hands

  5. Washverb

    to cover with a thin or watery coat of color; to tint lightly and thinly

  6. Washverb

    to overlay with a thin coat of metal; as, steel washed with silver

  7. Washverb

    to perform the act of ablution

  8. Washverb

    to clean anything by rubbing or dipping it in water; to perform the business of cleansing clothes, ore, etc., in water

  9. Washverb

    to bear without injury the operation of being washed; as, some calicoes do not wash

  10. Washverb

    to be wasted or worn away by the action of water, as by a running or overflowing stream, or by the dashing of the sea; -- said of road, a beach, etc

  11. Washnoun

    the act of washing; an ablution; a cleansing, wetting, or dashing with water; hence, a quantity, as of clothes, washed at once

  12. Washnoun

    a piece of ground washed by the action of a sea or river, or sometimes covered and sometimes left dry; the shallowest part of a river, or arm of the sea; also, a bog; a marsh; a fen; as, the washes in Lincolnshire

  13. Washnoun

    substances collected and deposited by the action of water; as, the wash of a sewer, of a river, etc

  14. Washnoun

    waste liquid, the refuse of food, the collection from washed dishes, etc., from a kitchen, often used as food for pigs

  15. Washnoun

    the fermented wort before the spirit is extracted

  16. Washnoun

    a mixture of dunder, molasses, water, and scummings, used in the West Indies for distillation

  17. Washnoun

    that with which anything is washed, or wetted, smeared, tinted, etc., upon the surface

  18. Washnoun

    a liquid cosmetic for the complexion

  19. Washnoun

    a liquid dentifrice

  20. Washnoun

    a liquid preparation for the hair; as, a hair wash

  21. Washnoun

    a medical preparation in a liquid form for external application; a lotion

  22. Washnoun

    a thin coat of color, esp. water color

  23. Washnoun

    a thin coat of metal laid on anything for beauty or preservation

  24. Washnoun

    the blade of an oar, or the thin part which enters the water

  25. Washnoun

    the backward current or disturbed water caused by the action of oars, or of a steamer's screw or paddles, etc

  26. Washnoun

    the flow, swash, or breaking of a body of water, as a wave; also, the sound of it

  27. Washnoun

    ten strikes, or bushels, of oysters

  28. Washadjective

    washy; weak

  29. Washadjective

    capable of being washed without injury; washable; as, wash goods

  30. Etymology: [OE. waschen, AS. wascan; akin to D. wasschen, G. waschen, OHG. wascan, Icel. & Sw. vaska, Dan. vaske, and perhaps to E. water. 150.]

Wikidata

  1. WASH

    WASH is a Clear Channel Communications radio station located in Washington, D.C.. Known on-air as "Wash-FM", the station has an adult contemporary format. The station also streams its broadcast on iHeartRadio. WASH has been a soft adult contemporary station in one form or another since the 70s. For a few years in the early 80s, the station attempted to do a Top 40 / CHR format which had no success and the station later returned to their original Soft AC format. On Saturday nights from 7 pm - midnight, the station plays disco music and related songs in a program known as "Jammin' Saturday Night". The station recently began broadcasting two hours of 80s music immediately following "Jammin' Saturday Night". The station plays exclusively Christmas music from mid-November through Christmas Day and calls itself "Washington's Home for the Holidays" during the season. In 2011, the station started playing exclusively Christmas music on Friday, November 18.

Chambers 20th Century Dictionary

  1. Wash

    wosh, v.t. to cleanse with water: to overflow: to waste away by the action of water: to cover with a thin coat of metal or paint: in mining, to separate from earth by means of water.—v.i. to cleanse one's self, to cleanse clothes with water: to stand water, of clothes: (coll.) to stand the test.—n. a washing: the break of waves on the shore: the rough water left behind by a moving vessel: the shallow part of a river or arm of the sea: a marsh or fen: alluvial matter: waste liquor, refuse of food, &c.: that with which anything is washed: a lotion: a thin coat of paint, metal, &c.: (slang) a fictitious kind of sale of stock or other securities between parties of one interest, or by a broker who is at once the buyer and the seller, and who minds his own interest rather than that of his clients.—adj. Wash′able.—ns. Wash′-ball, a ball of toilet-soap; Wash′-bā′sin, -bowl, Wash′hand bā′sin, a bowl in which to wash face and hands; Wash′-board, a corrugated board for rubbing clothes on in washing: a thin plank placed on a boat's gunwale to prevent the sea from breaking over: a board round the bottom of the walls of a room; Wash′-bott′le, a bottle used by chemists for washing chemical preparations and instruments; Wash′-cloth, a piece of cloth used in washing; Wash′-dirt, earth rich enough in metal to pay for washing; Wash′er, one who washes: a flat ring of iron or leather between the nave of a wheel and the linch-pin, under the head of a screw, &c.—v.t to lift with washers; Wash′erman, a man who washes clothes, esp. for hire:—fem. Wash′erwoman; Wash′-gild′ing, a gilding made with an amalgam of gold from which the mercury is driven off by heat, leaving a coating of gold; Wash′-house, Wash′ing-house, a house for washing clothes in; Wash′iness, state of being watery, weakness, worthlessness; Wash′ing, the act of cleansing by water: the clothes washed, esp. at one time: what is washed; Was′hing-machine′, a machine for washing clothes; Wash′ing-pow′der, a powdered preparation used in washing clothes; Wash′ing-up, Wash′-up, cleaning up; Wash′-leath′er, split sheepskin prepared with oil in imitation of chamois, and used for household purposes: buff leather for regimental belts.—adj. Wash′-off, that will not stand washing.—ns. Wash′-out, an erosion of earth by the action of water, the hole made by such; Wash′-pot, a vessel for washing; Wash′-stand, Wash′hand stand, a piece of furniture for holding ewer, basin, and other requisites for washing a person; Wash′-tub, a tub for washing clothes.—adj. Wash′y, watery, moist: thin, feeble.—n. Rain′-wash, a washing away by the force of rain: a deposit formed by rain. [A.S. wascan; Ice. vaska, Ger. waschen.]

Dictionary of Nautical Terms

  1. wash

    An accumulation of silt in estuaries. Also, a surface covered by floods. Also, a shallow inlet or gulf: the east-country term for the sea-shore. Also, the blade of an oar. Also, a wooden measure of two-thirds of a bushel, by which small shell-fish are sold at Billingsgate, equal to ten strikes of oysters.--Wash, or a-wash. Even with the water's edge.

Editors Contribution

  1. wash

    To clean using a liquid.

    We wash our body every day in the shower.


    Submitted by MaryC on March 17, 2020  

Suggested Resources

  1. wash

    Song lyrics by wash -- Explore a large variety of song lyrics performed by wash on the Lyrics.com website.

  2. WASH

    What does WASH stand for? -- Explore the various meanings for the WASH acronym on the Abbreviations.com website.

Surnames Frequency by Census Records

  1. WASH

    According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Wash is ranked #9751 in terms of the most common surnames in America.

    The Wash surname appeared 3,324 times in the 2010 census and if you were to sample 100,000 people in the United States, approximately 1 would have the surname Wash.

    47.3% or 1,574 total occurrences were Black.
    45.9% or 1,528 total occurrences were White.
    2.6% or 89 total occurrences were of Hispanic origin.
    2.4% or 81 total occurrences were of two or more races.
    0.8% or 29 total occurrences were Asian.
    0.6% or 23 total occurrences were American Indian or Alaskan Native.

Matched Categories

British National Corpus

  1. Written Corpus Frequency

    Rank popularity for the word 'wash' in Written Corpus Frequency: #1641

  2. Verbs Frequency

    Rank popularity for the word 'wash' in Verbs Frequency: #411

Usage in printed sourcesFrom: 

Anagrams for wash »

  1. shaw

  2. Shaw

  3. haws

How to pronounce wash?

How to say wash in sign language?

Numerology

  1. Chaldean Numerology

    The numerical value of wash in Chaldean Numerology is: 6

  2. Pythagorean Numerology

    The numerical value of wash in Pythagorean Numerology is: 6

Examples of wash in a Sentence

  1. Judy Harrison:

    I teach them to sing' Happy Birthday' to yourself twice to make sure they wash for at least 20 seconds.

  2. Don Schaffner:

    If you are worried, you can always wash and or sanitize your hands after handling anything that you think might be contaminated.

  3. Kahlil Gibran:

    I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

  4. Janet Haas:

    Hand-washing being a way to prevent infections is not new news anymore, for sure, we know a lot about the fact that it works. We are paying more attention now to the fact that it's not just washing your hands but how you wash your hands.

  5. Paola Regeni:

    If April 5 proves to be a wash-out, we expect a strong response from our government, a really strong one.

more sentences »

Popularity rank by frequency of use

wash#1#5204#10000

References

Translations for wash

From our Multilingual Translation Dictionary

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