Word.ws English Dictionary

dishwash

dishwash verb: to wash dishes and other dishware.

Verb

dishwash (third-person singular simple present dishwashes, present participle dishwashing, simple past and past participle dishwashed)

  1. (intransitive) To wash dishes and other dishware.
    • The chefs never cooked before, the cashiers never cashiered before, the dishwashers never dishwashed before, the waitresses never waitressed before, and the managers never managed before.2007, Thomas Quealy, M + M
    • As a transition measure, the trustees gave Smitty the assignment to cook breakfast on Saturday mornings; at times I dishwashed for him.2012, Bruce Ross, From Dawn to Dusk to Daylight, page 83
  2. (transitive) To wash in a dishwasher.
    • Who knows how many times the cup has been dishwashed2001, David Mitchell, chapter 1, in number9dream, London: Hodder and Stoughton, →ISBN

Noun

dishwash (uncountable)

  1. (attributive) The washing of dishes.
    • Vim is the market leader in the dishwash category.2004, S. L. Gupta, Marketing Research, page 524
    • There is, in practice, a little more creative freedom with the dishwash powders just referred to and multisurface cleaners containing a maximum of 1% available chlorine. However, this clearly needs to be determined from base to base.2008, Uri Zoller, Handbook of Detergents, page 717
  2. Dishwater.

Forms of dishwash

third-person singular presentdishwashes
present participledishwashing
past participledishwashed
pastdishwashed

Origin of dishwash

Back-formation from dishwashing or dishwasher.

Words formed from dishwash

Questions about dishwash

What does dishwash mean?
Dishwash means to wash dishes and other dishware.
What part of speech is dishwash?
Dishwash can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of dishwash?
The past tense of dishwash is dishwashed.

Words near dishwash in the dictionary

  1. dishumoured
  2. dishumouring
  3. dishumours
  4. dishware
  5. dishwares
  6. dishwash
  7. dishwashable
  8. dishwashed
  9. dishwasher
  10. dishwasher detergent
  11. dishwasher proof

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dishwash (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:

Cite this entry: “dishwash.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dishwash. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.