To cover something with white paint or lime, or to cover up wrongdoing by giving false explanations or a false appearance of innocence.
From Middle English, combining 'white' and 'wash.' Originally meant literally washing or coating with white-colored liquid (lime or chalk water). The figurative meaning of covering up misconduct developed from the idea of covering something up visually.
The term became politically famous during Watergate and continues to describe scandals today—the original whitewash was actually literal, used on colonial buildings, but Shakespeare may have used 'whitewash' as a metaphor centuries before the political scandals.
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