laundry
[lawn-dree, lahn-]
- articles of clothing, linens, etc., that have been or are to be washed.
- a business establishment where clothes, linens, etc., are laundered.
- a room or area, as in a home or apartment building, reserved for doing the family wash.
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Origin of laundry
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for laundry
Contemporary Examples
These are two in a laundry list of troubling connections between the two companies.
A new report says laundry detergent pods are sending 20,000 kids to the hospital each year.
Kids Eat the Darndest Things: Laundry Pods, Teething Necklaces, and More Of The Weirdest Stuff Sending Kids to the E.R.Russell Saunders
November 14, 2014
Lie Down with Lions (1985) gave a shoutout to gays in a laundry list of human rights to worry about.
Popular Novelist Ken Follett Is a Slightly Unlikely and Certainly Unsung Gay IconWilliam O’Connor
October 1, 2014
There is no running water there, nor gyms, nor fast food, nor laundry service.
Whatever You Do Someone Will Die. A Short Story About Impossible Choices in IraqNathan Bradley Bethea
August 31, 2014
This issue is the most contentious in a laundry list of redactions Feinstein has now asked the White House to reverse.
White House Must Decide Who Will Be Named in the CIA ‘Torture Report’Josh Rogin, Eli Lake
August 7, 2014
Historical Examples
I suppose you've been sending things to the laundry, and—what do you do about your stockings?
KMary Roberts Rinehart
They were taught gratis, and every week they helped with the laundry for the convent.
My Double LifeSarah Bernhardt
There had been a strike of laundry girls which for a week was the talk of the town.
The HarborErnest Poole
Starch is made from it both for the laundry and for the manufacture of farina, dextrin, etc.
StoryologyBenjamin Taylor
The only beauty about the house is in the laundry and gardens.
The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, CompleteMadame La Marquise De Montespan
laundry
- a place where clothes and linen are washed and ironed
- the clothes or linen washed and ironed
- the act of laundering
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Word Origin
C16: changed from C14 lavendry; see launder
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for laundry
n.
late 14c., "place for washing;" mid-15c. "act of washing," from Old French lavanderie, from Latin lavandaria, plural of lavandarium "things to be washed," from lavare "to wash" (see lave). As a verb, from 1880. Laundry list in figurative sense is from 1958.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
Idioms and Phrases with laundry
laundry
see wash one's dirty linen (laundry).
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The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.