dishwasher
Pluraldishwashers
- 1A machine that cleans dishes, glasses, and utensils automatically using hot water and detergent.
The dishwasher hummed quietly through its rinse cycle.
She stacked the plates in the dishwasher before leaving for work.
Note
The name is older than the machine. Middle English already had dysche wescheare, simply dish plus washer, long before any appliance existed, so the word first belonged to the person at the sink and was later handed to the machine that took over the job. In everyday use its verb is load: you load the dishwasher, the way you put on a load of laundry.
- 2A person who washes dishes, especially one hired to do so in a restaurant kitchen.
The new dishwasher quit after his first busy weekend on the line.
A reliable dishwasher keeps clean plates moving back to the dining room all night.
Note
In a restaurant this is a job title as much as a description: the dishwasher holds a position on the kitchen staff, and dishy is a synonym for it. Thomas Quealy's M + M (2007) plays on the title by running it backward into a verb, with "the dishwashers never dishwashed before" set beside cashiered and waitressed. The joke works because each job name already hides a verb.
- 3The wagtail, a long-tailed European bird often found near streams and on wet ground.
The dishwasher darted across the wet meadow, tail flicking with every step.
Down by the brook, a pair of dishwashers chased insects above the water.
Similarwagtail
Note
A country name for the bird, heard in Cornwall and Wiltshire rather than in standard English. John Coulson Tregarthen's Wild Life at the Land's End sets it beside another Cornish name, the tinner, both for the water-wagtail of streams and wet fields. Outside those counties, listeners will hear only the kitchen machine or the kitchen worker, so in general writing the bird is simply a wagtail.
- 4The restless flycatcher (Myiagra inquieta), a small bird native to Australia and New Guinea.
The dishwasher perched briefly on a fence post before darting after a fly.
Across the wetland, dishwashers hawked insects with quick, restless flights.
Note
An Australian name, and a second bird to share it with the Cornish wagtail. The scientific name echoes the common one, since inquieta means "restless." Because dishwasher is a regional name and also the everyday word for a kitchen appliance, writing for a general audience is clearer with restless flycatcher, giving dishwasher as the local name.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English dysche wescheare, equivalent to dish + washer.