Meaning of wash a blackamoor white | Babel Free

Definitions

To labour in vain, especially so as to present something as better than it really is; to whitewash.

dated, idiomatic, offensive

Examples

“It is not my Intention to put myself in a Perspiration concerning any of the Hieroglyphic Emblems, or Monstrosities of the Egyptians, for it is all Labour in vain, or washing a Blackamoor white.”

“And universally, all Endeavours to vindicate a bad Cause, are but making it the worse. The Moral in my Last Paper was intended to caution you against attempting to wash the Blackamoor white: but you are resolved to struggle.”

“Folly then announces herself as the bright being whose mere aspect dispels all gloom; her present purpose being a panegyric upon herself, “which, who dares say he has a better claim than I to pronounce? and is not this candour better than a rhetorician’s apish display of his power to wash a blackamoor white?[…]””

“Therefore it is washing a blackamoor white to describe the French pre-war policy as peaceful and defensive. It had chained itself to Russia, and as yet nobody has maintained that the latter’s policy was defensive.”

CEFR level