wash
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "wash", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "wash" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "wash" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
wash is aEnglishverb. It means: To clean with water. Pronounced /wɒʃ/. It ranks #3,271 in English word frequency. Often confused with WS and way.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | wash |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /wɒʃ/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #3,271 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for wash is 4 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /wɒʃ/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,271 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 14 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for wash, with forms such as "awsh", "wahs", and "washh". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "WS", "way", "wax", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English wasshen, waschen, weschen (“to wash”), from Old English wascan (“to wash”), from Proto-West Germanic *waskan (“to wash”), from Proto-Germanic *waskaną, *watskaną (“to wash, get wet”), from Proto-Indo-European *wed- (“wet, water”). Cognat… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is wash, spelled W-A-S-H, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1To clean with water.
- 2To carry away or erode by the force of water in motion.
- 3To be eroded or carried away by the action of water.
- 4To clean oneself with water.
- 5To cover with water or any liquid; to wet; to fall on and moisten.
- 6To move with a lapping or swashing sound; to lap or splash.
- 7To be cogent, convincing; to withstand critique.
- 8To bear without damage the operation of being washed; to be suitable for washing.
- 9To cover with a thin or watery coat of colour; to tint lightly and thinly.
- 10To overlay with a thin coat of metal.
- 11To pass or extract (a gas or gaseous mixture) through or over a liquid for the purpose of purifying it, especially by removing soluble constituents.
- 12To separate valuable material (such as gold) from worthless material by the action of flowing water.
- 13To cause dephosphorization of (molten pig iron) by adding substances containing iron oxide, and sometimes manganese oxide.
- 14To mix up tiles (before a new game) to make them random; to shuffle.
Etymology
From Middle English wasshen, waschen, weschen (“to wash”), from Old English wascan (“to wash”), from Proto-West Germanic *waskan (“to wash”), from Proto-Germanic *waskaną, *watskaną (“to wash, get wet”), from Proto-Indo-European *wed- (“wet, water”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian waaske (“to wash”), West Frisian waskje (“to wash”), Dutch wassen, wasschen (“to wash”), Low German waschen (“to wash”), German waschen (“to wash”), Danish vaske (“to wash”), Faroese and Icelandic vaska (“to wash”), Norwegian Bokmål vaske (“to wash”), Norwegian Nynorsk vaske, vaska (“to wash”), Swedish vaska (“to wash”). The noun is cognate with Saterland Frisian Waaske (“wash”), West Frisian wask (“wash”), Dutch was (“wash”), Low German Wask, Waske (“wash”), German Wäsche (“wash”), Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish vask (“wash”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: awsh,wahs,washh,wassh,wsah,wwash
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for wash
Misspelling Variants of "wash"
Frequency rank: #3,271 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter W in our English index: