wish-wash

plural wish-washes

1. archaiccountableuncountableAny weak, thin drink.

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

   1926, May Byron, May Clarissa Gillington Byron, Pot-luck, page 395

   3 more examples

   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.

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

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

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

   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.”

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

2. countableuncountableTalk, music, or art, or ideas that lack any value, substance, originality, or meaning; dreck.

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

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

   5 more examples

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

   1866, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Letters to Leipzig Friends, page 121

   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.

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

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

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

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

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

   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, Dagnosław Demski, Dominika Czarnecka, Staged Otherness, page 392

3. countableuncountableThe sound of liquid sloshing

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

   2014, Laurence Cramer, How To Look After Bert Reynolds

   3 more examples

   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.

   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

   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.

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

   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.

   2013, Sally Swain, Twisting and Turning, page 5

comparative more wish-wash · superlative most wish-wash

1. Vapid; lackluster; mediocre

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

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

   4 more examples

   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.

   1883 May, John Wells Thatcher, “Fair Criticism”, in On the road, volume 1, number 1, page 4

   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.

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

   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.

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

   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.

   1987, Newstar - Issues 1-10, page 81

2. Unfocussed, meandering or impulsive

   he had a wish-wash way of regarding matters.

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

   2 more examples

   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.

   1832, David Garrick, James Boaden, The Private Correspondence of David Garrick, page 349

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

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

present singular third person wish-washes · participle present wish-washing · participle past wish-washed · past wish-washed

1. To slosh around.

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

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

   4 more examples

   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.

   1908, Great Thoughts from Master Minds, page 186

   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.

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

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

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

   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.

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

2. To behave in a wishy-washy manner, to vacillate

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

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

   3 more examples

   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.

   1921, United States. Congress. House, Contested-election Case of James I. Campbell V. Robert L. Doughton, page 644

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

   2021, Bryan CP Steele, Shadowrun: Tourist Trapped

   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?

   2022, Nozomu Mochitsuki, Tearmoon Empire: Volume 7