settings
Great Expectations vocabulary
361 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.
help & settings
[x]
-
whitewash
-
synonyms: lime paint, calcimine ???
► definition
Definition:a cheap paint made of chalk and slaked lime. It reacts with CO2 after application and forms a calcium carbonate layer. Because it can rub off onto clothing it was not favored and eventually became associated with the poor who could not otherwise afford paint.
► uses
Uses:
In Britain and Ireland, whitewash was used historically, for both interiors and exteriors, in workers' cottages, and still retains something of this association with rural poverty. In the United States, a similar attitude is expressed in the old saying: "Too proud to whitewash and too poor to paint".
---
But the upper rooms, too, were all bare and sheeted and ghostly, and, higher up, the stairs were spotted with great stars of whitewash, and there were ladders and planks on which strange men in dirty white blouses were talking and joking a great deal, and doing a little whitewashing now and then, when they had time for it.
F. Anstey. The Black Poodle and Other Tales (1896)
---
he took me in his arms and called me a blessed little goose, and said he would go down to the cellar, if I wished, and have it whitewashed into the bargain.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)
---
The walls of all the rooms was plastered, and most had carpets on the floors, and the whole house was whitewashed on the outside. Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
help with search