English · Idiom Candidate

come out in the wash

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Become known or resolved eventually

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

Trở nên rõ ràng hoặc giải quyết cuối cùng

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: emerge during laundry

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

It'll come out in the wash I guess!

Angry Fry vowed to take Barnet to an industrial tribunal for unfair dismissal — promising that the story of his stormy relationship with Flashman would ‘ all come out in the wash.’

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “come out in the wash” mean?

Become known or resolved eventually Literally: emerge during laundry

Is “come out in the wash” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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