It'll all come out in the wash

Posted by ESC on May 05, 2004

In Reply to: It'll all come out in the wash posted by Washer on May 05, 2004

: Where does the term, "it'll all come out in the wash" come from? From what I understand, the saying means everthing works out evenly in the end.

IT'LL ALL COME OUT IN THE WASH -- "We'll find out sooner or later what's going on, and we needn't worry about it now. The literal thought is that dirt on an item of clothing will be dissolved eventually in the washing. An old form of the saying, used by Cervantes in 'Don Quixote' , is: 'All will away in the bucking.' To 'buck' cloth or clothing was to steep it in lye as a form of bleaching. Henry Festing Jones, who collaborated with the novelist Samuel Butler, once quoted Butler as saying in 1876: 'As my cousin's laundress says, 'It will all come right in the wash.'" From The Dictionary of Cliches by James Rogers (Ballantine Books, New York, 1985).