In British English, wash up means to wash the dishes: Who's going to wash up? In American English, the same phrase means to wash your hands and face, usually before a meal. Americans usually say do the dishes or wash the dishes.
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wash up (after dinner) — British; wash up + plates/pans; do the washing-up; wash up (before dinner) — American: wash your hands and face
- You cooked tonight, so I'll wash up after dinner.
- There's a pile of pans to wash up from last night's party.
- Go and wash up before dinner, your hands are covered in paint.
What changed
First versionIt's my turn to make the washing-up tonight.
RevisionIt's my turn to do the washing-up tonight.
Make can seem right for housework, but English usually uses do for household chores: do the washing-up, do the cleaning, do the shopping. Only the verb was changed.
Wash up and wash out are different. Wash out means to wash the inside of a particular thing: wash out a cup, wash out a jar before recycling it. Wash up in the British sense means to wash all the dishes after a meal, usually without an object.
Your turn
After the big family dinner, the sink was full of plates, so Grandad offered to ___.
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wash up — The sink is full of plates, and Grandad offers to wash the dishes, which is wash up. Wash out needs a particular object that's washed inside, and without one it doesn't work here.
Write about how washing the dishes is shared in your home. Say who does it and on which days.
In our flat I wash up on weekdays, and my partner does the washing-up at the weekend.
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