dirty laundry
noun
Simple meaning
Unflattering or embarrassing facts, or questionable activities that one wants to remain secret, but which someone else may use as blackmail.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
durteelawndreeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈdɝtilɔndɹi
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
idiomatic
Unflattering or embarrassing facts, or questionable activities that one wants to remain secret, but which someone else may use as blackmail.
metonymic
A clothes hamper or other container in which soiled laundry is placed.
Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see dirty, laundry.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Unflattering or embarrassing facts, or questionable activities that one wants to remain secret, but which someone else may use as blackmail.
Used this way, dirty laundry is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.