bleach

Etymology 1

From Middle English bleche (also bleke), from Old English blǣċ, blǣc, variants of blāc (“bright, shining, glittering”), from Proto-West Germanic *blaik, from Proto-Germanic *blaikaz (“pale, shining”). More at bleak.

adj

1. (archaic) Pale; bleak.

Etymology 2

From Middle English blechen, from Old English blǣċan (“to bleach, whiten”), from Proto-West Germanic *blaikijan, from Proto-Germanic *blaikijaną, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰel- (“to shine”). Cognate with Dutch bleken (“to bleach”), German bleichen (“to bleach”), Danish blege, Swedish bleka (“to bleach”). Related to Old English blāc (“pale”) (English blake; compare also bleak).

verb

1. (transitive) To treat with bleach, especially so as to whiten (fabric, paper, etc.) or lighten (hair).
   Candifacio, to make whyte, to bleache, to make to glowe lyke a burnyng cole. 1538, Thomas Elyot, The Dictionary of Syr Thomas Eliot Knyght, London: Thomas Berthelet
   Immortal liberty, whose look sublime 1774, Tobias Smollett, Independence: An Ode, London: J. Murray, page 8
   The destruction of the colouring matters attached to the bodies to be bleached is effected either by the action of the air and light, of chlorine, or of sulphurous acid. 1830, Andrew Ure, “BLEACHING”, in A Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines, London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longmans, page 128
2. (intransitive) To be whitened or lightened (by the sun, for example).
   The autumn trees, ravaged as they are, take on the flash of tattered flags kindling in the gloom of cool cathedral caves where gold letters on marble pages describe death in battle and how bones bleach and burn far away in Indian sands. 1927, Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, London: The Hogarth Press, published 1920, Part 2, p. 198
3. (intransitive, biology, of corals) To lose color due to stress-induced expulsion of symbiotic unicellular algae.
   Once coral bleaching begins, corals tend to continue to bleach even if the stressor is removed.
4. (transitive, figurative) To make meaningless; to divest of meaning; to make empty.
   semantically bleached words that have become illocutionary particles

noun

1. (uncountable) A chemical, such as sodium hypochlorite or hydrogen peroxide, or a preparation of such a chemical, used for disinfecting or whitening.
2. (countable) A variety of bleach.

Etymology 3

From Middle English bleche, from Old English blǣċu, blǣċo (“paleness, pallor”), from Proto-Germanic *blaikį̄ (“paleness”). See Etymology 1 above.

noun

1. An act of bleaching; exposure to the sun.

Etymology 4

From Middle English bleche, from Old English blǣċe (“irritation of the skin, leprosy; psoriasis”).

noun

1. (obsolete) A disease of the skin characterized by hypopigmentation and itching, believed in the 17th century to be a form a leprosy.