Unwashed

adj

adj ·2 syllables ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Not having been washed. not-comparable

    "I say that the eyass should have her meat unwashed, until she becomes a brancher—’twere the ready way to give her the frounce, to wash her meat sooner, and so knows every one who knows a gled from a falcon."

  2. 2
    Vulgar, plebeian, lowbrow. not-comparable

    "Gannon is looked upon with distrust by a good many members of the Citizens’ Committee—or perhaps it is with jealousy. He remains, however, a hero to the unwashed elements."

Adjective
  1. 1
    not cleaned with or as if with soap and water wordnet
  2. 2
    of or associated with the great masses of people wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
dirtyplebeianbasebaseborncanaillecarrion

Example

More examples

"The usually delicious meal was tainted with unwashed hands."

Etymology

From Middle English unwasched, unwasschyd, unwessched, a weak verb conjugation of earlier Middle English unwaschen (“unwashen”), equivalent to un- + washed.

Related phrases

great unwashedunwashed masses

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