Whitewash is a type of inexpensive paint made from slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) and chalk (whiting). Other additives have historically included water glass, glue, Portland cement, salt, soap, milk or flour.

Whitewash cures through a reaction with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to form calcium carbonate in the form of calcite, a reaction known as carbonatation.

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 is a form of censorship via omission in which errors or misdemeanors are deliberately concealed or downplayed. In politics, whitewash is sometimes used to describe a cover-up or a deliberate downplaying of a problem. 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."
• 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. In rugby union a team which comes bottom of a competition like the Six Nations Championship wins the Wooden Spoon, a team that wins no games at all is said to have been whitewashed.

See also

• Transparency (humanities)

External links

• Farm recipe for whitewash, with details
• Types of whitewash