bleacht

Verb

bleach (third-person singular simple present bleaches, present participle bleaching, simple past and past participle bleached)

1. (transitive) To treat with bleach, especially so as to whiten (fabric, paper, etc.) or lighten (hair).
   • Candifacio, to make whyte, to bleache, to make to glowe lyke a burnyng cole.1538, Thomas Elyot, The Dictionary of Syr Thomas Eliot Knyght, London: Thomas Berthelet

   Synonyms:

   whitewash

2. (intransitive) To be whitened or lightened (by the sun, for example).
   • The white sheet bleaching on the hedge,
     With heigh! the sweet birds, O, how they sing!c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
3. (intransitive) To lose color due to stress-induced expulsion of symbiotic unicellular algae.
   • Once coral bleaching begins, corals tend to continue to bleach even if the stressor is removed.
4. (figuratively, transitive) To make meaningless; to divest of meaning; to make empty.
   • semantically bleached words that have become illocutionary particles

See all 9 meanings of bleach