Word.ws English Dictionary

flatwash

flatwash noun: a style of painting in which shapes are completely filled with a solid color and have no outlines.

Noun

flatwash (uncountable)

  1. A style of painting in which shapes are completely filled with a solid color and have no outlines.
    • And yet this group is absolutely monochrome and, as all the cattle in it are painted in ocher flatwash, one actually finds no echo at all of the symbolism that has for so long been mentioned by various authors.2004, Jean-Loic Le Quellec, Rock Art in Africa: Mythology and Legend, page 22

Verb

flatwash (third-person singular simple present flatwashes, present participle flatwashing, simple past and past participle flatwashed)

  1. To paint in a uniform and unshaded color.
    • The entrance to the block—a double door with frosted-glass panels—opened into a wide rectangular foyer flatwashed in cream.1957, Charles Eric Maine, The Isotope Man, page 70

Adjective

flatwash (not comparable)

  1. Pertaining to the methods or products of flatwash.
    • Here he found a number of engravings some of which were enlivened with a certain amount of flatwash colour, mostly ochre.1949, Alan Houghton Brodrick, Lascaux, page 34
    • Attempts to show the essential curves of the animals are well known in both engraving and painting, except for the simple outlines and some of the early flatwash paintings.1986, John Waechter, Prehistoric Man: The Fascinating Story of Man's Evolution, page 74

Forms of flatwash

third-person singular presentflatwashes
present participleflatwashing
past participleflatwashed
pastflatwashed

Origin of flatwash

From flat + wash.

Questions about flatwash

What does flatwash mean?
Flatwash means a style of painting in which shapes are completely filled with a solid color and have no outlines.
What part of speech is flatwash?
Flatwash can be a noun, a verb or an adjective.

Words near flatwash in the dictionary

  1. flatuous
  2. flatus
  3. flatuses
  4. flatware
  5. flatwares
  6. flatwash
  7. flatwashed
  8. flatwashes
  9. flatwashing
  10. flatwater
  11. flatwaters

Source and license

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