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dirty linen

noun

personal or private matters that could cause embarrassment if made public: You didn't have to air our dirty linen to all your friends!

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Also called dirty laundry.

Origin:
1945–50

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Dirty linen is always a great word to know.

So is callithumpian. Does it mean:

a scrap or morsel of food left at a meal.

a children's mummer's parade, as on the Fourth of July, with prizes for the best costumes.

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Slang Dictionary

dirty linen definition

and dirty laundry

n.
scandal; unpleasant private matters. : I wish you wouldn't put our dirty linen out for everyone to see. , She seems always to drag out her dirty linen whenever possible.

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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People who can define Dirty linen may know 45,520 words, as many as a 12th grader.

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Matching Quote

"Always this same morbid interest in other people and their doings, their privacies, their dirty linen, always this air of alertness for personal happenings, personalities, personalities, personalities. Always this subtle criticism and appraisal of other people, this analysis of other people's motives. If anatomy presupposes a corpse, then psychology presupposes a world of corpses. Personalities, which means personal criticism and analysis, presuppose a whole world laboratory of human psyches waiting to be vivisected. If you cut a thing up, of course it will smell. Hence, nothing raises such an infernal stink, at last, as human psychology."

-D.H. Lawrence

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