greenwash
/ˈɡɹiːnwɒʃ/
greenwash noun: a false or misleading picture of environmental friendliness used to conceal or obscure damaging activities.
Noun
greenwash (plural greenwashes)
- A false or misleading picture of environmental friendliness used to conceal or obscure damaging activities.
- People can be cynical about companies hiding behind green ideals, their radars finely tuned to detect a greenwash.2010, Meegan Jones, Sustainable Event Management: A Practical Guide, →ISBN, page 38
- Greta Thunberg has blasted politicians as hypocrites and international climate summits as empty words and greenwash.2020 November 9, Damian Carrington, “‘Hypocrites and greenwash’: Greta Thunberg blasts leaders over climate crisis”, in the Guardian, retrieved 09 Nov 2020
- Synonyms:
- greenwashing
Verb
greenwash (third-person singular simple present greenwashes, present participle greenwashing, simple past and past participle greenwashed)
- To portray with a false or misleading image of environmental friendliness so as to conceal or obscure damaging activities.
- But what happens more often is that media “greenwashes” dirty energy sources (coal, gas, nuclear power) as “clean”—a particularly dangerous notion because it belies the threat they pose to our planet and human health.2011, Elaine Wellin, Kristen Seraphin, Project Censored, Censored 2012: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2010-11, →ISBN, Health and the Environment
- The commercials were very effective – in 1990, they won an Effie advertising award, and subsequently became a case study at Harvard Business school. They also became notorious among environmentalists, who have proclaimed them the gold standard of greenwashing – the corporate practice of making...2016 August 20, Bruce Watson, “The troubling evolution of corporate greenwashing”, in The Guardian
greenwash meaning in Tamil
greenwash in Tamil
- பசுமைப் புரட்டு, பசுமைக் கண்துடைப்பு
Synonyms of greenwash
Forms of greenwash
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | greenwashes |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | greenwashes |
| present participle | greenwashing |
| past participle | greenwashed |
| past | greenwashed |
Origin of greenwash
Blend of green (“environmentally friendly”) + whitewash (or green + -wash), coined by Jay Westerveld in 1986.
Words formed from greenwash
Questions about greenwash
- What does greenwash mean?
- Greenwash means a false or misleading picture of environmental friendliness used to conceal or obscure damaging activities.
- What is greenwash in Tamil?
- Greenwash in Tamil is பசுமைப் புரட்டு, பசுமைக் கண்துடைப்பு. See Greenwash meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is greenwash?
- Greenwash can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce greenwash?
- Greenwash is pronounced /ˈɡɹiːnwɒʃ/.
- What is the plural of greenwash?
- The plural of greenwash is greenwashes.
Words near greenwash in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: greenwash (page history and authors); greenwash (Tamil Wiktionary) (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-greenwash.ogg.
Cite this entry: “greenwash.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/greenwash. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.