Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Soiled or laundered clothes and linens; wash.
  • noun A commercial establishment for laundering clothes or linens.
  • noun A room or area, as in a house, for doing the wash.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of washing; a washing.
  • noun A place, as a room or a building, where clothes are washed and ironed; an establishment where laundry-work is carried on.
  • noun [In the following passage the word is ludicrously put for launder:
  • noun Soluble Prussian blue.
  • To launder.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A laundering; a washing.
  • noun A place or room where laundering is done; a laundry room.
  • noun A business establishment where clothing is laundered for a fee.
  • noun A collection of items such as articles of clothing or bed linens that need to be laundered, or have just been laundered.
  • noun A business establishment with washing and drying machines operated by coins, where items such as articles of clothing may be laundered and dried by the customer.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A laundering; a washing.
  • noun A place or room where laundering is done - including, by extension, other forms of laundering than clothes washing.
  • noun That which needs to be, is being, or has been laundered.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun garments or white goods that can be cleaned by laundering
  • noun workplace where clothes are washed and ironed

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English lavendrye, laundry, from Old French lavanderie, from lavandier; see launder.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French lavanderie. See launder.

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Examples

  • Today, this morning, at dawn, we loaded up all the laundry, which was piles and piles of it, because the dryer has been breaking for days, and drove off to hunt down a laundromat these are both scarcer and pricier than they used to be -- I will appall you later with tales of how much it costs to wash a load of laundry*.

    Rats delagar 2009

  • The keyword laundry list will no longer carry the day, but keywords remain important to the resume and must be included.

    You’re Better Than Your Job Search Marc Cenedella 2010

  • The water from the laundry is then used throughout the day for flushing the toilet - I turned off the water to the toilet and we just pour in a bucket of water to flush.

    Another Green Living Option: Hand Wash Your Clothes 2008

  • It might make things hectic now, but when I come home from travelling, I find I am always very tired and the laundry is a mountain.

    A Little Holiday 2008

  • City Budget Director Tony Arcuri went through what he called a laundry list of things effecting the budget including, county cuts of about $900,000, contractual increases in salaries for union employees of about $840,000, a drop in mortgage tax revenue estimated at

    The Observer-Dispatch Home RSS 2009

  • Republicans are generally a whole lot better than Democrats about hiding such dirty laundry from the public eye, but the Tea Party folks may not be as disciplined as the party regulars in this regard, so it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

    Chris Weigant: Tea Partiers Should Prepare for Disappointment Chris Weigant 2010

  • Republicans are generally a whole lot better than Democrats about hiding such dirty laundry from the public eye, but the Tea Party folks may not be as disciplined as the party regulars in this regard, so it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

    Chris Weigant: Tea Partiers Should Prepare for Disappointment Chris Weigant 2010

  • Republicans are generally a whole lot better than Democrats about hiding such dirty laundry from the public eye, but the Tea Party folks may not be as disciplined as the party regulars in this regard, so it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

    Chris Weigant: Tea Partiers Should Prepare for Disappointment Chris Weigant 2010

  • My Husband said this "the only thing worse than doing laundry, is to be unable to do it" ....

    Mechanic Fail or no I cannot fix teh washing machinze - SpouseBUZZ 2009

  • I just kept hearing, Single mothers do this every day and their houses are clean, their laundry is done, they take care of themselves.

    The Ugly Truth - SpouseBUZZ 2009

Comments

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  • "Lil and I had met and mated when we were both twenty-five. We formed a deep, irrational, obviously neurotic need for one another: love - one of society's many socially accepted forms of madness. We got married: society's solution to loneliness, lust and laundry. We soon discovered that there is absolutely nothing wrong with being married which being single can't cure."

    - 'The Dice Man', Luke Rhinehart.

    February 4, 2008

  • "The rain has stopped, a wind is blowing, so I will hang out my laundry that now lies reeking at the bottom of my big pack. Diving into those dark depths I pull out dreadful lumps of congealed mildewed clothing. Soon I am boiling a tin of water. Whhheeee Boom! an air-burst shell. It stops, I arise and see that the water is boiling, I drop in my clothes, then half a bar of soap and start stirring the lot with a stick. My idyll is shattered by another air burst; was Hitler trying to range on my laundry?

    German OP Officer: Three rounds on to zer underpants Milligan. Fire! Arh Vonderschoen! A direct hit on zer soap! Four Gunner Milligan, the laundry is over."

    - Spike Milligan, 'Mussolini: My Part In His Downfall.'

    April 19, 2009