Sanewashing
noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The practice of restating someone’s rhetoric to render it more palatable or acceptable. uncountable
"This “sanewashing” of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism; it’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy. By continually reframing Trump’s incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty to inform the public and are instead providing cover for increasingly erratic behavior from a former—and potentially future—president."
- 2 The attempt to downplay the radicality of a person or idea to render it more palatable to the general public. uncountable
"There’s a hot new term doing the rounds among media critics: “sanewashing.” The term itself actually isn’t new, and it wasn’t born in media-criticism circles, per se; according to Urban Dictionary, it was coined in 2020 on a Reddit page for neoliberals..and meant “attempting to downplay a person or idea’s radicality to make it more palatable to the general public.”"
- 1 present participle and gerund of sanewash form-of, gerund, participle, present
Example
More examples"This “sanewashing” of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism; it’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy. By continually reframing Trump’s incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty to inform the public and are instead providing cover for increasingly erratic behavior from a former—and potentially future—president."
Etymology
From sane + -wash + -ing.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.