wash away

Verb

wash away (third-person singular simple present washes away, present participle washing away, simple past and past participle washed away)

1. To eliminate or destroy by fast-moving water, such as a flood or a high sea.
   • Thousands were left homeless as the flood waters washed away the eastern part of the city.
   • The main East Coast line from Edinburgh to Berwick was blocked at Cockburnspath and Grantshouse by flood water, which washed away part of an embankment, and by the collapse of about 300 tons of rubble on to the track.1956 October, “Summer Floods in Scotland”, in Railway Magazine, page 658
2. (broadly, figuratively) To eliminate.
   • This latest piece of information, if true, will wash away all doubt.
   • Why would this shared history be so easily washed away? In her introduction, Colley directed us away from the notion that nations were characterised by cultural and ethnic homogeneity – of “blood and soil” – and towards Benedict Anderson’s definition of a nation as an “imagined community”2014 September 16, Ian Jack, “Is this the end of Britishness”, in The Guardian