1. 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.
When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, . . . he took water and washed his hands before the
multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person.
Matt. xxvii. 24. 2. 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.
Fresh-blown roses washed with dew.
Milton.
[The landscape] washed with a cold, gray mist.
Longfellow. 3. To waste or abrade by the force of water in motion; as, heavy rains wash a road or an embankment.
4. 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.
Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins.
Acts xxii. 16.
The tide will wash you off.
Shak. 5. To cover with a thin or watery coat of color; to tint lightly and thinly.
6. To overlay with a thin coat of metal; as, steel washed with silver.
To wash gold, etc., to treat earth or gravel, or crushed ore, with water, in order to separate the gold
or other metal, or metallic ore, through their superior gravity. — To wash the hands of. See under
Hand.
Wash
(Wash), v. i.
1. To perform the act of ablution.
Wash in Jordan seven times.
2 Kings v. 10. 2. To clean anything by rubbing or dipping it in water; to perform the business of cleansing clothes, ore,
etc., in water. "She can wash and scour." Shak.
3. To bear without injury the operation of being washed; as, some calicoes do not wash. [Colloq.]
4. 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.
Wash
(Wash), n.
1. The act of washing; an ablution; a cleansing, wetting, or dashing with water; hence, a quantity, as of
clothes, washed at once.
2. 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.
"The Wash of Edmonton so gay." Cowper.
These Lincoln washes have devoured them.
Shak.
