wish-wash

English

Noun

wish-wash (countable and uncountable, plural wish-washes)

1. (archaic) Any weak, thin drink.
   • 1926, May Byron, May Clarissa Gillington Byron, Pot-luck, page 395:

     Between the result of the above, and the ordinary wish-wash served as coffee, the difference is too great to be expressed.

   • 2000, Sándor Márai, Memoir of Hungary: 1944-1948, page 270:

     The famous bohemian cafés, the Dôme, the Coupole and the Rotonde, still remained; the hooded iron stove still warmed the regulars settled beside the round tables from the wintry streets; the waiter, with the unvarying rudeness of Paris, served the "national coffee," that grayish-brown wish-wash which passed for coffee in Paris and which, like everything labeled "national," roused the suspicion that it wasn't what it was called but only resembled the real thing.

   • 2014, Paul R. Josephson, The Conquest of the Russian Arctic, page 135:

     They got 250 grams of bread and wish-wash for breakfast; in the evening, he who had worked got kasha, wish-wash, and bread.

   • 2017, Larry E. Holmes, Stalin's World War II Evacuations: Triumph and Troubles in Kirov, page 77:

     It consisted of bread and for the first course "the usual wish-wash” (balanda), “so-called soup in which several pieces of congealed cabbage floated.”

2. Talk, music, or art, or ideas that lack any value, substance, originality, or meaning; dreck.
   • 1866, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Letters to Leipzig Friends, page 121:

     It is a thing that fails altogether to interest; a wish-wash that only serves to pass the time.

   • 1900 June, “The Old Gentleman”, in The Social Gospel, number 29, page 13:

     They confined their sermons on Sunday to the decorous wish-wash in which average men treated in a harmless way subjects to which the people were indifferent.

   • 1976, Laurie Thomas, Laurie F. Thomas, The Most Noble Art of Them All, page 65:

     it is a clearing away of the wish-wash which assumes that lack of national distinction is an international virtue.

   • 2000, Australia. Parliament. Senate, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard).: Senate, page 20486:

     What I am doing is asking the senator to explain why Labor has come up with such wish-wash on this matter.

   • 2017, Eric J. Bargerhuff, The Most Misused Stories in the Bible:

     But then all of that seems to be a bunch of wish-wash—nothing more than lip service.

   • 2021, Dagnosław Demski, Dominika Czarnecka, Staged Otherness, page 392:

     This simile is accurate only if the object of analysis is considered in a void, but in the context of "an old Germanic culture" the performance loses its value and becomes only a "wish-wash."

   • 2021, Simon Fenwick, The Crichel Boys: Scenes from England's Last Literary Salon:

     And Ralph Vaughan Williams 'is now a solitary figure, for his influence has served to produce a steady trickle of pentatonic wish-wash.

3. The sound of liquid sloshing
   • 1883 November 17, George Manville Fenn, “The Rosery Folk”, in Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science and Arts, volume 20, number 1038, page 726:

     Martha steadily turned and turned, and the cream within the snowy white sycamore box went 'wish-wash, wish-wash, wish-wash, playing, after all, a very delicious tune in the young farmer's ears, for it suggested yellow butter, and yellow butter suggested sovereigns, and sovereigns suggested home comforts and saving, and above all, the turning of that handle suggested the winning of just the very wife to occupy that home.

   • 2012, Michael Robinson, Newman's Quest for the One True Church, page A-55:

     Then in the morning the washing of the deck; rush comes an engine pipe on the floor–ceases, is renewed, flourishes about, rushes again; then suddenly half a dozen brooms, wish-wash, wish-wash, scrib-scrub, scratching and roaring alternately.

   • 2013, Sally Swain, Twisting and Turning, page 5:

     As they lay there, dazedly reliving the adventure that had brought them to this place, they heard the sound of the wish-wash-wish of lapping water.

   • 2014, Laurence Cramer, How To Look After Bert Reynolds:

     Yet at these moments, that sound was not a single sound. There was another beat in the warmth of the wish-wash.

Adjective

wish-wash (comparative more wish-wash, superlative most wish-wash)

1. Vapid; lackluster; mediocre
   • 1883 May, John Wells Thatcher, “Fair Criticism”, in On the road, volume 1, number 1, page 4:

     Of course we fear to address ourselves to those gentlemen whose reading is limited to the daily newspaper and novels of the wish-wash order.

   • 1895, Sabine Baring-Gould, A Garland of Country Song, page x:

     To suit a degraded English taste, foreigners like the late Mr. Lŏhr, had to write down to the level of the wish-wash drawing-room ballad.

   • 1912, Edwin Evans, Historical, Descriptive and Analytical Account of the Entire Works of Johannes Brahms, page 36:

     After-effects are in this case in absolute opposition to first impressions —indeed nothing could better betoken a variation of the wish-wash order than that it should be instantly appreciated.

   • 1949, English Review Magazine - Volumes 2-3, page 312:

     With an example of the wish-wash composer, and his wish-wash lady love, before my eyes, I could only congratulate the Philistines.

   • 1987, Newstar - Issues 1-10, page 81:

     By the time it gets to that point they are already disccouraged because they have been discouraged from the fact that they are looked upon as the wish-wash, that they are not going to make it in the entertainment industry and right there that is a discouraging factor.

2. Unfocussed, meandering or impulsive
   • 1832, David Garrick, James Boaden, The Private Correspondence of David Garrick, page 349:

     While you are sitting by the side of the placid Thames, under shades of your own planting, planning the operations of a next winter's campaign, we are in the wish-wash way at Margate, amidst deep caverns, high cliffs, and expanded waters, enjoying the less calm, but more sublime objects of Nature.

   • 1915, “The Glory of Achievement”, in The Retail Druggist, volume 22, page 25:

     Be nothing, do nothing, say nothing, and the world will let you slip into eternity damned by your own wish-wash, willy-nilly life.

   • 1925, John E. Calfee, Doing the Impossible, page 78:

     he had a wish-wash way of regarding matters.

Verb

wish-wash (third-person singular simple present wish-washes, present participle wish-washing, simple past and past participle wish-washed)

1. To slosh around.
   • 1908, Great Thoughts from Master Minds, page 186:

     And that night, with the stars jumping and the air lating cold (for we were up in the 40's), and the John wish-washing through the seas at three leagues the hour, MacMuir told me the story of Mungo Maxwell.

   • 1910, Florence Converse, A Masque of Sibyls, page 31:

     A little scalloped cove where weedy creatures Trail in and out, wish-washing on the tide .

   • 1910 June, E.C.W., “By the Carribbean Sea”, in Pan American Magazine: The New-world Review, volume 10, number 2, page 78:

     The sea doesn't care about you and me, It goes on all the time Wish-wish-washing away out there (In a way that tells you it doesn't care) With a sort of wistful weary rhyme, The sad old song of the sea.

   • 1945, Harold Wallace Ross, William Shawn, Tina Brown, The New Yorker - Volume 21, Issues 21-37, page 20:

     Where the waves wish-wash, and the foghorn blows, And the blowfish nibble at your toes - oes - oes, The blowfish nibble at your toes.

   • 2023, Thomas Henry Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, page 62:

     This you will understand when I tell you that in consequence of these same defects I have had water an inch or two deep in my cabin, wish-washing about ever since we left Madeira.

2. To behave in a wishy-washy manner, to vacillate
   • 1921, United States. Congress. House, Contested-election Case of James I. Campbell V. Robert L. Doughton, page 644:

     Hain't been a fair election in 15 years to my knowing, and I am confident about what I am talking about, but I am getting sick and tired of this wish-washing about eating tickets; have known them to do this after election.

   • 1950, United States. Congress, Congressional Record, page A-248:

     With his eyes glued on the fall elections, President Truman is wish-washing this country into certain war with Russia .

   • 2021, Bryan CP Steele, Shadowrun: Tourist Trapped:

     What would your brother do if he found out you were drawing up blood pacts and then wish-washing your way through them?

   • 2022, Nozomu Mochitsuki, Tearmoon Empire: Volume 7:

     For someone who went on a whole rant about sentimental wish-washing and the pitfall of emotions, he sure did a whole lot of wish-washing and pitfalling himself back in his days, didn't he?

Related terms

• wishy-washy