wash one's hands

present singular third person washes one's hands · participle present washing one's hands · participle past washed one's hands · past washed one's hands

1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see wash, one's, hands.

   Be sure to wash your hands before preparing food.

   1 more example

   If you're healthy and you know it, wash your hands! If you're healthy and you know it, wash your hands!

   2020, traditional, “If You're Healthy and You Know It”

2. euphemisticTo go to the toilet.
3. figurativelyTo absolve oneself of responsibility or future blame for; to refuse to have any further involvement with.

   He had entirely washed his hands of the difficulty, and it had become ours.

   1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, “Quite at Home”, in Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1853, →OCLC, page 53

   5 more examples

   Sharp[er]. […] Mony is but Dirt, Sir Joſeph—Mere Dirt. / Sir Jo[seph Wittoll]. But I profeſs, it is a Dirt I have vvaſhed my Hands of at preſent; I have laid it all out upon my Back.

   1693, Will[iam] Congreve, The Old Batchelour, a Comedy. […], London: […] Peter Buck, […], →OCLC, Act II, scene i, page 11

   'Then I vvaſh my Hands of you,' cries the Doctor, 'and I deſire you to pay me for the Trouble I have had already.[…].'

   1749, Henry Fielding, “In which the Surgeon Makes His Second Appearance”, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume III, London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, book VIII, page 165

   It was no affair of his; he had long ago washed his hands of the whole matter, and left things to take their chance.

   1884, H[enry] Rider Haggard, chapter VII, in Dawn […], volume III, London: Hurst and Blackett, […], →OCLC, page 70

   Although Norine had pretended to wash her hands of all responsibility for Branch's little charge, she was by no means so inhuman as she appeared.

   1916 September, Rex Beach, “El Demonio’s Child”, in Rainbow’s End […], New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers, →OCLC, page 245

   [A]fter Congress had refused to appropriate money to continue them, President [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt washed his hands of the two ventures.

   1936 June 8, “National Affairs: Ditch Up, Dam Down”, in Henry R[obinson] Luce, editor, Time, New York, N.Y.: Time Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 01 Jan 2012

   Synonyms: disclaim, disown, abjure, deny, disavow, disclaim, disown, forsay