whitewashed
part of speech
adjective (whitewashed); past form of whitewash (whitewash, whitewashes, whitewashed, whitewashing)
meaning for a pupil
1) Painted with whitewash, a cheap white paint of lime and water used on walls. tree →
2) (figurative) Covered up: a whitewashed report hides mistakes or wrongdoing. tree →
3) (sport, UK informal) to be whitewashed means to lose every game in a series. tree →
sense in the lessons
A house, history and news word. The very first scene of The Wind in the Willows: Mole is spring-cleaning, whitewashing his little home, until he throws down his brush and says «Hang spring-cleaning!» Country cottages and farm walls are often whitewashed. In news, «whitewash» means hiding the truth. In Tom Sawyer, Tom tricks his friends into whitewashing a fence.
examples
- Mole was whitewashing the walls of his home. tree →
- The cottage had whitewashed walls and a red door. tree →
- Tom Sawyer got his friends to whitewash the fence. tree →
- The report was whitewashed to hide the mistakes. tree →
- England were whitewashed 5–0 in the series. tree →
- The whitewashed houses shone in the sun. tree →
- In the forest by the river Gudenau, not far from the heath, and beneath the ridge of land, stood the little farm, newly painted and whitewashed. tree →
note
Regular verb. In maths sport problems «whitewashed 5–0» means one side won every game. Figurative sense means covering up, which is dishonest.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «whitewashed» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.