Sustainwash
//səˈsteɪnwɒʃ// verb
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Verb
- 1 To engage in the sustainability analogue of, or subset of, greenwashing.
"wondering whether the advertisement's talk of sustainability might be trying to sustainwash the reality"
Example
More examples"wondering whether the advertisement's talk of sustainability might be trying to sustainwash the reality"
Etymology
From sustain + -wash, following the established pattern of greenwash, pinkwash, and similar forms (which came ultimately from the figurative-extension sense of whitewash as "to slap a paintjob over the truth to hide it and to give a specious nice appearance"); this form also rhymes with brainwash, as does humanewash.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.