blackwash

plural blackwashes

1. New ZealandcountableslanguncountableA whitewash victory for any New Zealand national sporting team.

   Synonyms: blackout

2. countableslanguncountableball gamesA whitewash victory for the West Indies cricket team. Started in the 1984–86 "Blackwash" series of the West Indian cricket team in England in 1984.
3. countableuncountablemedicineA lotion made by mixing calomel and limewater.
4. countableslanguncountablebusinessPublic campaigns and advertising funded by the coal industry to draw attention away from environmentally unsustainable practices or to justify exclusion from carbon taxes.
5. countableuncountablegovernmentA villainization campaign.

present singular third person blackwashes · participle present blackwashing · participle past blackwashed · past blackwashed

1. transitiveTo villainize, to present in a damaging light.

   Near-synonyms: tar, smear, besmirch

   1 more example

   Mistrusting my own prejudices, I have taken the story from the two parliamentary papers in which our officials have done their utmost to whitewash the tribunals and the pigeon-shooting party, and to blackwash the villagers.

   1904, George Bernard Shaw, John Bull's Other Island, page lxii

   Synonyms: tar, smear, besmirch · Antonyms: whitewash, launder, rehabilitate

2. transitiveTo cover with a black color.

   The masts of British frigates and U.S. warships blackwashed the piers at the Embarcadero.

   2004, Peter Plate, Fogtown, page 109

   1 more example

   I do not care whether a man whitewashes or blackwashes his fence, or whether he uses guano or barnyard manure, or what his mode of cultivation may be, the question is, Does he get good fruit?

   1892, Henry Ward Beecher, Plymouth Pulpit: Sermons Preached in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, Sept 1873-Sept 1874, Volume 2

   Synonyms: blacken

3. transitiveTo portray in a revisionist fashion as belonging to a black race of people.

   Basquiat's epic-size, experimental canvases betray his radical determination to blackwash not solely history but art history.

   2019, Celeste-Marie Bernier, Stick to the Skin, page 102

   1 more example

   TheCYGamer, for example, called out the game for liberal propaganda, stating that, "[…] This is straight up blackwashing history to please the SJW's."

   2022, Stefan Aguirre Quiroga, White Mythic Space: Racism, the First World War, and Battlefield 1