Sportswashing

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The use of sporting events to improve an organization or polity's reputation, especially to distract from human rights abuses.

    "From the 2016 European Formula 1 Grand Prix, matches at football's 2020 European Championship, and now the European Games, Azerbaijan is practicing sportswashing – using major sporting events as a way of diverting attention from human rights violations."

Verb
  1. 1
    present participle and gerund of sportswash form-of, gerund, participle, present

Example

More examples

"From the 2016 European Formula 1 Grand Prix, matches at football's 2020 European Championship, and now the European Games, Azerbaijan is practicing sportswashing – using major sporting events as a way of diverting attention from human rights violations."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From sports + -wash + -ing.

Etymology 2

From sportswash + -ing.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.