dishwasher

UK/ˈdɪʃˌwɒʃə/US/ˈdɪʃˌwɑʃɚ/

nounB1+Common in everyday speech and writing · #5,870 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: dishwashers

A dishwasher is a machine that washes your plates, cups, and forks for you. Load the dishwasher, run the dishwasher, empty the dishwasher.

It uses less water than washing the same load by hand, because it recirculates a small amount at high temperature. Rinsing plates first wastes water and can make it clean worse, since the detergent needs something to work on. It also names a person who washes up.

Definitions of dishwasher

1noundishwasherA machine that washes dishes.B1+
“Could you load the dishwasher and switch it on after dinner?”
- Said"Load the dishwasher before you go up; I'm not doing it in the morning."
- WrittenThe dishwashers hummed through every evening, the most reliable members of the household.
- UsedRinse plates before they go in the dishwasher, or the filter clogs.
- ContrastA dishwasher, not a sink. The sink is where you wash by hand; the dishwasher does it while you sit down. sink →
- Not thisThe person who washes up in a restaurant is a dishwasher too, but here it is the machine.
- Exchange"Is this dishwasher safe?""The plate is. The knife isn't."
- SimplyPut the cups in the dishwasher. It cleans them.
Patternload / empty / run the dishwasher · dishwasher safe · put sth in the dishwasher · dishwasher tablet

dishwasher is a machine.

Remember it

DISH-WASHER → it WASHes the DISHes

Exactly what it says: a dish washer, the machine that washes the dishes so that you do not have to.

hooks ontodish wash

Where it comes from

Dish plus washer, recorded in Middle English for the person long before the machine existed.

Proto-Indo-European
*wed-
Middle English
dysche wescheare
English, today
dishwasher

From Middle English dysche wescheare, equivalent to dish + washer.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in In the Kitchen

Practise this word

dishwasher in the wild

A mix of water and dishwasher detergent is pumped to one or more rotating sprayers, cleaning the dishes with the cleaning mixture.
Dishwasher
In addition to domestic units, industrial dishwashers are available for use in commercial establishments such as hotels and restaurants, where many dishes must be cleaned.
Dishwasher
The Fairy brand of washing-up liquid and Cascade brand of dishwasher detergent are also sold under the name "Dreft" in some countries, including the Netherlands and Belgium.
Dreft
Garis-Cochran Manufacturing Company, which built dishwashers, grew through a focus on hotels and other commercial customers and was renamed as Cochran's Crescent Washing Machine Company in 1897.
Josephine Cochrane
If a dishwasher has a built-in water softener there will be a special compartment inside the dishwasher where the salt is to be added when needed.
Dishwasher salt

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Definitions of dishwasher

1noundishwasherA machine that washes dishes.B1+

“Could you load the dishwasher and switch it on after dinner?”

Said"Load the dishwasher before you go up; I'm not doing it in the morning."
WrittenThe dishwashers hummed through every evening, the most reliable members of the household.
UsedRinse plates before they go in the dishwasher, or the filter clogs.
ContrastA dishwasher, not a sink. The sink is where you wash by hand; the dishwasher does it while you sit down. sink →
Not thisThe person who washes up in a restaurant is a dishwasher too, but here it is the machine.
Exchange"Is this dishwasher safe?""The plate is. The knife isn't."
SimplyPut the cups in the dishwasher. It cleans them.

Patternload / empty / run the dishwasher · dishwasher safe · put sth in the dishwasher · dishwasher tablet

dishwasher is a machine.