Word.ws English Dictionary

dirty linen

dirty linen noun: matters of an embarrassing or unsavoury nature that one would normally wish to keep private.

Noun

dirty linen (uncountable)

  1. Matters of an embarrassing or unsavoury nature that one would normally wish to keep private.
    • A lot of dirty linen was exposed during the inquiry.
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see dirty, linen.
    • Hotels generate a lot of dirty linen.

Questions about dirty linen

What does dirty linen mean?
Dirty linen means matters of an embarrassing or unsavoury nature that one would normally wish to keep private.
What part of speech is dirty linen?
Dirty linen is a noun.

Words near dirty linen in the dictionary

  1. dirty joke
  2. dirty jokes
  3. dirty kitchen
  4. dirty kitchens
  5. dirty laundry
  6. dirty linen
  7. dirty look
  8. dirty looks
  9. dirty magazine
  10. dirty magazines
  11. dirty martini

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dirty linen (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.

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