Whitewash
From Free net encyclopedia
Whitewash is a type of inexpensive paint made from slaked lime (Calcium hydroxide) and chalk (whiting). Other additives have historically included water glass, glue, salt, soap, milk and flour. Whitewash cures through a reaction with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to form calcite.
It is usually applied externally, as Tom Sawyer was famously made to do to a fence in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Occasionally it is colored and used on interiors, such as the hallways of apartment buildings. Whitewash is especially effective on adobe-like materials because it is absorbed easily and the resultant chemical reaction hardens the substrate.
Lime wash is pure slaked lime in water. It produces a unique surface glow due the to refraction of calcite crystals.
Other meanings
- Whitewash in politics is sometimes used to describe a cover-up or a deliberate downplaying of a problem, for example the Hutton Inquiry. Its first reference dates back to 1762 in a Boston Evening Post article. In 1800, the word was first used in a political context, when a Philadelphia Aurora editorial said that "if you do not whitewash President Adams speedily, the Democrats, like swarms of flies, will bespatter him all over, and make you both as speckled as a dirty wall, and as black as the devil."
- Whitewashing is a common term for Censorship.
- Whitewash is sometimes used for the tendency to downplay the importance of Africans and African Americans or to make them "whiter".
- Whitewash is also used as a derogatory term referring to a member of a certain race who have embraced Western, "white" culture over one's own. This is usually used as a predicate nominative, e.g., "He's whitewashed."
- Whitewash in sport is used when one team wins all of a series of matches against another team.