Other forms: laundries
Laundry is the pile of clothes that needs washing, or has just been washed. Do the laundry, laundry basket, dirty laundry.
It covers both the clothes and the room or business. Airing dirty laundry in public is the fixed phrase for discussing private matters where others can hear. The Magdalene laundries in Ireland are a serious historical subject under the same word. Note laundry list, American for a long list of items; and that laundry comes from the Latin for washing.
1nounlaundryClothes needing washing, or the place they are washed.
“I need to do the laundry because I've got no clean socks.”
laundry is washing, or a washing place.
Old French lavanderie comes from Latin lavare, to wash. Launder, lavatory and lava come from the same washing.
Proto-Indo-European
*lewh₃-
Middle English
lavendrie
English, today
laundry
From Middle English lavendrie. From Middle English lavendrie, from Old French lavanderie, from Latin lavandaria. See launder.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA