great unhosed
great unhosed is the alternative form of great unwashed.
Meaning of great unwashed
Noun
great unwashed pl (plural only)
- The general populace, particularly the working class.
- [T]he gentlemen of the inns of court, and the gentlemen of the universities… live in abodes which were erected long before the custom of cleanliness and decency obtained among us. … Gentlemen, there can be but little doubt that your ancestors were the Great Unwashed: and in the Temple especially...1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 30, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published...
- Synonyms:
- hoi polloi, unwashed masses, great unhosed, canaille, commonality, commonalty, crowd, commonage, demos, everyone
Origin of great unhosed
Coined by Chris Morris in the 1997 Brass Eye episode "Crime" in a satirical parody of crime reporting, with the apparent implication that the people referred to should be cleaned with a hose like farm animals.
Questions about great unhosed
- What is great unhosed the alternative form of?
- Great unhosed is the alternative form of great unwashed.
Words near great unhosed in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: great unhosed (page history and authors); great unwashed (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: “great unhosed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/great_unhosed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.