washyoudaoicibaDictYouDict[wash 词源字典]
wash: [OE] Etymologically, to wash something is probably to clean it with ‘water’. Like German waschen, Dutch wasschen, and Swedish vaska, it goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *waskan, which seems to have been derived from *wat-, the base which produced English water. (Washer ‘small disc with a hole’ [14] is usually assumed to come from the same source, but its semantic link with wash has never been satisfactorily explained.)
=> water[wash etymology, wash origin, 英语词源]
wash (v.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
Old English wascan "to wash, cleanse, bathe," transitive sense in late Old English, from Proto-Germanic *watskan "to wash" (cognates: Old Norse vaska, Middle Dutch wasscen, Dutch wassen, German waschen), from stem *wed- "water, wet" (see water (n.1)). Related: Washed; washing.

Used mainly of clothes in Old English (the principal verb for washing the body, dishes, etc. being þwean). Old French gaschier "to stain, soil; soak, wash" (Modern French gâcher) is from Frankish *waskan, from the same Germanic source. Italian guazzare also is a Germanic loan-word. To wash (one's) hands of something id 1550s, from Pilate in Matt. xxvii.24. To wash up "clean utensils after a meal" is from 1751. Washed up "no longer effective" is 1923, theater slang, from notion of washing up at the end of a job.
wash (n.)youdaoicibaDictYouDict
late Old English wæsc "act of washing," from wash (v.). Meaning "clothes set aside to be washed" is attested from 1789; meaning "thin coat of paint" is recorded from 1690s; sense of "land alternately covered and exposed by the sea" is recorded from mid-15c.