wash one's hands
UK/ˌwɒʃ wʌnz ˈhæn(d)z/US/ˌwɔʃ wʌnz ˈhæn(d)z/
wash one's hands verb: used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see wash, one's, hands.
Verb
wash one's hands (third-person singular simple present washes one's hands, present participle washing one's hands, simple past and past participle washed one's hands)
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see wash, one's, hands.
- Be sure to wash your hands before preparing food.
- If you're healthy and you know it, wash your hands!
If you're healthy and you know it, wash your hands!2020, traditional, “If You're Healthy and You Know It”
- To go to the toilet.
- To absolve oneself of responsibility or future blame for; to refuse to have any further involvement with.
- Sharp[er]. […] Mony is but Dirt, Sir Joſeph—Mere Dirt. / Sir Jo[seph Wittoll]. But I profeſs, it is a Dirt I have vvaſhed my Hands of at preſent; I have laid it all out upon my Back.1693, Will[iam] Congreve, The Old Batchelour, a Comedy. […], London: […] Peter Buck, […], →OCLC, Act II, scene i, page 11
- 'Then I vvaſh my Hands of you,' cries the Doctor, 'and I deſire you to pay me for the Trouble I have had already.[…].'1749, Henry Fielding, “In which the Surgeon Makes His Second Appearance”, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume III, London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, book VIII, page 165
wash one's hands meaning in Telugu, Tagalog, Arabic and Malay
wash one's hands in Telugu
- to absolve oneself of responsibility or future blame for
- చేతులు కడుగుకొను cētulu kaḍugukonu
wash one's hands in Tagalog
- to absolve oneself of responsibility or future blame for
- maghugas-kamay
wash one's hands in Arabic
- to absolve oneself of responsibility or future blame for
- غَسَلَ يَدَيْهِ مِنَ الْأَمْرِ ḡasala yadayhi mina l-ʔamri
wash one's hands in Malay
- to absolve oneself of responsibility or future blame for
- cuci tangan
More languagesFewer languages
- wash one's hands in Indonesian
- cuci tangan
Synonyms of wash one's hands
Forms of wash one's hands
| third-person singular present | washes one's hands |
|---|---|
| present participle | washing one's hands |
| past participle | washed one's hands |
| past | washed one's hands |
Origin of wash one's hands
The figurative sense comes from the account in Matthew 27:24 of the Bible in which Pontius Pilate, unwilling to condemn Jesus who has committed no crime but whose crucifixion the crowd has called for, symbolically washes his hands in public and says (according to the King James Version; spelling modernized): “I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.” Another literal and figurative usage of the expression can be traced to Deuteronomy 21:6 where the elders of Israel are commanded to "wash their hands" as part of a ceremonial absolution ritual initiated upon the discovery of a corpse outside the jurisdiction of any city.
Questions about wash one's hands
- What does wash one's hands mean?
- Wash one's hands means used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see wash, one's, hands.
- What is wash one's hands in Telugu?
- Wash one's hands in Telugu is చేతులు కడుగుకొను (cētulu kaḍugukonu). See Wash one's hands meaning in Telugu.
- What part of speech is wash one's hands?
- Wash one's hands is a verb.
- How do you pronounce wash one's hands?
- Wash one's hands is pronounced /ˌwɒʃ wʌnz ˈhæn(d)z/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of wash one's hands?
- The past tense of wash one's hands is washed one's hands.
Words near wash one's hands in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: wash one's hands (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-wash one's hands.ogg.
Cite this entry: “wash one's hands.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wash_one%27s_hands. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.