Word.ws English Dictionary

sustainwash

/səˈsteɪnwɒʃ/

sustainwash verb: to engage in the sustainability analogue of, or subset of, greenwashing.

Verb

sustainwash (third-person singular simple present sustainwashes, present participle sustainwashing, simple past and past participle sustainwashed)

  1. To engage in the sustainability analogue of, or subset of, greenwashing.
    • wondering whether the advertisement's talk of sustainability might be trying to sustainwash the reality

Forms of sustainwash

third-person singular presentsustainwashes
present participlesustainwashing
past participlesustainwashed
pastsustainwashed

Origin of sustainwash

From sustain + -wash, following the established pattern of greenwash, pinkwash, and similar forms (which came ultimately from the figurative-extension sense of whitewash as "to slap a paintjob over the truth to hide it and to give a specious nice appearance"); this form also rhymes with brainwash, as does humanewash.

Words that rhyme with sustainwash

Questions about sustainwash

What does sustainwash mean?
Sustainwash means to engage in the sustainability analogue of, or subset of, greenwashing.
What part of speech is sustainwash?
Sustainwash is a verb.
How do you pronounce sustainwash?
Sustainwash is pronounced /səˈsteɪnwɒʃ/.
What is the past tense of sustainwash?
The past tense of sustainwash is sustainwashed.

Words near sustainwash in the dictionary

  1. sustainingly
  2. sustainings
  3. sustainment
  4. sustainments
  5. sustains
  6. sustainwash
  7. sustainwashed
  8. sustainwashes
  9. sustainwashing
  10. Sustaita
  11. Sustaitas

Source and license

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