Washing

How to spell washing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce washing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does washing mean?

1. nounClothes, sheets, and other items that are being laundered or have just been laundered.
2. nounThe activity or process of cleaning something with water and usually soap.

Washing in a sentence

• The washing is still hanging on the line in the back garden.

• Washing the car by hand took most of the afternoon.

• She folded the washing and stacked it neatly in the airing cupboard.

• Frequent washing of your hands helps stop infections from spreading.

Where does washing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word grows from the Old English verb wascan, meaning 'to cleanse with water', which traces back to a Proto-Germanic root waskan that is closely linked to the word for water itself. Adding the suffix -ing produced both the action noun, the activity of cleaning things in water, and the present participle of the verb. By the medieval period it had also gathered the concrete sense of the clothes and linen actually being laundered, so a household's 'washing' could mean the pile of garments as much as the task. The same Germanic family gives us close relatives in Dutch wassen and German waschen, all sharing that watery origin. Because the stressed vowel sounds like a short 'o' to most speakers, the spelling with an 'a' is the one small point worth remembering.

How the word is built

• wash (Old English wascan: to cleanse with water)
• -ing (forming a noun or present participle)