Washes

How to spell washes

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce washes

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does washes mean?

1. verbCleans something with water or another liquid, used with he, she, or it.
2. nounMore than one act of cleaning, or more than one product or facility for cleaning.

Washes in a sentence

• verb

  He washes the dishes every evening after dinner.

• noun

  The salon offers several different hair washes on its price list.

• verb

  She washes her hands carefully before preparing the meal.

• noun

  Two car washes opened on the same street this year.

Where does washes come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is an inflected form of the verb and noun 'wash', which descends from the Old English verb 'wascan', meaning to cleanse with water. That word grew from a Germanic root linked to 'water' itself, so the sense of soaking and rinsing was built into it from the start. The same ancestor produced the German 'waschen' and the Dutch 'wassen', showing how widely the cleaning sense spread across the Germanic languages. When a verb ends in the 'sh' sound, English adds '-es' rather than a plain '-s' so the ending can actually be pronounced, which is why the spelling is 'washes' and not 'washs'. The noun use, as in a quick wash or a car wash, follows the same pattern when it becomes plural.

How the word is built

• wash (Old English root meaning to clean with water)
• -es (third-person singular and plural suffix)