Meanings
- uncountableThe practice of restating someone’s rhetoric to render it more palatable or acceptable.
1 more example
This “sanewashing” of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism; it’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy. By continually reframing Trump’s incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty to inform the public and are instead providing cover for increasingly erratic behavior from a former—and potentially future—president.
2024 September 4, Parker Molloy, “How the Media Sanitizes Trump’s Insanity”, in The New Republic, retrieved 07 Sep 2024 - uncountableThe attempt to downplay the radicality of a person or idea to render it more palatable to the general public.
1 more example
There’s a hot new term doing the rounds among media critics: “sanewashing.” The term itself actually isn’t new, and it wasn’t born in media-criticism circles, per se; according to Urban Dictionary, it was coined in 2020 on a Reddit page for neoliberals..and meant “attempting to downplay a person or idea’s radicality to make it more palatable to the general public.”
2024 September 4, Jon Allsop, “Is the press ‘sanewashing’ Trump?”, in Columbia Journalism Review, retrieved 2024-09-00
- gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of sanewash
Origin
Cite this entry
sanewashing. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sanewashing
“sanewashing.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sanewashing. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “sanewashing,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/sanewashing.
Source: sanewashing on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.