Meaning of wash one's hands | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see wash, one's, hands.
2. To go to the toilet.
   euphemistic
3. To absolve oneself of responsibility or future blame for; to refuse to have any further involvement with.
   figuratively

Equivalents

Examples

“Be sure to wash your hands before preparing food.”

“If you're healthy and you know it, wash your hands! If you're healthy and you know it, wash your hands!”

“Sharp[er]. […] Mony is but Dirt, Sir Joſeph—Mere Dirt. / Sir Jo[seph Wittoll]. But I profeſs, it is a Dirt I have vvaſhed my Hands of at preſent; I have laid it all out upon my Back.”

“'Then I vvaſh my Hands of you,' cries the Doctor, 'and I deſire you to pay me for the Trouble I have had already.[…].'”

“He had entirely washed his hands of the difficulty, and it had become ours.”

“It was no affair of his; he had long ago washed his hands of the whole matter, and left things to take their chance.”

“Although Norine had pretended to wash her hands of all responsibility for Branch's little charge, she was by no means so inhuman as she appeared.”

“[A]fter Congress had refused to appropriate money to continue them, President [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt washed his hands of the two ventures.”

“Janet Dench, the executive director of the Canadian Council for refugees, said that both countries are "washing their hands" of the problem.”

“so this is it? I sold my soul for this? Washed my hands of that for this? I miss my mom and dad for this?”

“By contrast, today's government ministers appear to have washed their hands of Euston, perhaps thinking that its development can be entirely left to the private sector. I think that's a mistake.”

CEFR level