wash a blackamoor white

Meaning: (idiomatic,dated,nowoffensive)To labourin vain, especially so as topresentsomething as better than it really is; towhitewash.Synonyms:wash a negro white,(very offensive)wash a nigger white1778, John van Rymsdyk, Andreas van Rymsdyk,Museum Britannicum[…],page33:It is not my Intention to put myself in a Perspiration concerning any of the Hieroglyphic Emblems, or Monstrosities of the Egyptians, for it is all Labour in vain, orwashing a Blackamoor white.1786November 29, “Invisibilis”, “To the Captain”, inBostonian Scintillations; or, A War of Words[…], published1787,page30:And universally, all Endeavours to vindicate a bad Cause, are but making it the worse. The Moral in my Last Paper was intended to caution you against attempting towash the Blackamoor white: but you are resolved to struggle.1874,Arthur Lionel Smith,Erasmus: The Lothian Prize Essay, 1874,page25:Folly then announces herself as the bright being whose mere aspect dispels all gloom; her present purpose being a panegyric upon herself, “which, who dares say he has a better claim than I to pronounce? and is not this candour better than a rhetorician’s apish display of his power towash a blackamoor white?[…]”1932[1930],Johannes Haller, translated by Dora von Beseler,France and Germany: The History of One Thousand Years, page262:Therefore it iswashing a blackamoor whiteto describe the French pre-war policy as peaceful and defensive. It had chained itself to Russia, and as yet nobody has maintained that the latter’s policy was defensive.

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