Sanewash
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To restate one’s perspective to seem more palatable or acceptable. intransitive, transitive
"You can try to sanewash these claims as merely urging researchers to examine their own biases and try to include the perspectives of people outside the research community. But that would require a willful misreading of a document that all but declares research has to affirm a left-wing perspective."
- 2 To present someone's apparently crazy rantings as sensible discourse by editing out the bizarre portions or summarizing them with a more coherent interpretation. transitive
"This “sanewashing” of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism; it’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy."
Example
More examples"You can try to sanewash these claims as merely urging researchers to examine their own biases and try to include the perspectives of people outside the research community. But that would require a willful misreading of a document that all but declares research has to affirm a left-wing perspective."
Etymology
From sane + -wash.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.