MEANING
To refuse further involvement with someone or something for which you previously had some responsibility.
Use it for
describing someone refusing further responsibility; showing a person cutting ties with a difficult matter; distinguishing withdrawal from continued help; portraying deliberate disengagement from another person’s actionsDescribes deliberately ending involvement or responsibility, not merely directing blame elsewhere. Writing functions: Responsibility / Withdrawal. Semantic categories (by meaning): Responsibility / Withdrawal. Contexts: General conversation; Creative prose.
Words that belong together
- wash your hands of the whole affair
- wash your hands of someone
On the page
After the third broken agreement, the sponsor washed her hands of the project.
He said he had washed his hands of the dispute, though the letters showed continued involvement.
Word forms
- Base
- wash your hands of
Usage notes
Verbal idiom: wash/washes/washed/washing one’s hands of someone or something. Match the possessive to the subject; hands remains plural. Register: neutral. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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