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bleach

Pronunciation: /bliːt͡ʃ/

The English word “bleach” has 9 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A chemical, such as sodium hypochlorite or hydrogen peroxide, or a preparation of such a chemical, used for disinfecting or whitening.
  2. A variety of bleach.
  3. An act of bleaching; exposure to the sun.
  4. A disease of the skin characterized by hypopigmentation and itching, believed in the 17th century to be a form of leprosy.

verb

  1. To treat with bleach, especially so as to whiten (fabric, paper, etc.) or lighten (hair).
  2. To be whitened or lightened (by the sun, for example).
  3. To lose color due to stress-induced expulsion of symbiotic unicellular algae.
  4. To make meaningless; to divest of meaning; to make empty.

adjective

  1. Pale; bleak.

Etymology

From Middle English blechen, from Old English blǣċan (“to bleach, whiten”), from Proto-West Germanic *blaikijan, from Proto-Germanic *blaikijaną, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰel- (“to shine”). Cognate with Dutch bleken (“to bleach”), German bleichen (“to bleach”), Danish blege, Swedish bleka (“to bleach”). Related to Old English blāc (“pale”) (English blake; compare also bleak).

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.