Word.ws English Dictionary

come out in the wash

come out in the wash verb: of problems or difficulties, to work out, resolve, or become understood eventually and naturally.

Verb

come out in the wash (third-person singular simple present comes out in the wash, present participle coming out in the wash, simple past came out in the wash, past participle come out in the wash)

  1. (idiomatic) Of problems or difficulties, to work out, resolve, or become understood eventually and naturally.
    • It may look like a huge mess now, but I expect that it will all come out in the wash as time goes on.
  2. (idiomatic) Of advantages and disadvantages, to cancel each other out.
    • The number 12 bus is faster, but the number 17 stops nearer my house, so it all comes out in the wash.
    • I have heard it said that “Wrong grades are wrong both ways, and so although any GCSE certificate with 8 grades might have two wrong grades, one is too high and the other too low. So it all comes out in the wash. It doesn’t matter.”2019 January 19, Dennis Sherwood, “1 school exam grade in 4 is wrong. Does this matter?”, in Higher Education Policy Institute
  3. (idiomatic) Of the truth: to be inevitably revealed in the future.
    • You can do everything you can to hide this, but everything comes out in the wash.

Forms of come out in the wash

third-person singular presentcomes out in the wash
present participlecoming out in the wash
pastcame out in the wash
past participlecome out in the wash

Questions about come out in the wash

What does come out in the wash mean?
Come out in the wash means of problems or difficulties, to work out, resolve, or become understood eventually and naturally.
What part of speech is come out in the wash?
Come out in the wash is a verb.
What is the past tense of come out in the wash?
The past tense of come out in the wash is came out in the wash.

Words near come out in the wash in the dictionary

  1. come online
  2. come ons
  3. come onto
  4. come out
  5. come out in
  6. come out in the wash
  7. come out of one's shell
  8. come out of the broom closet
  9. come out of the closet
  10. come out of the woodwork
  11. come out on top

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: come out in the wash (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-come out in the wash.ogg.

Cite this entry: “come out in the wash.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/come_out_in_the_wash. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.