douche

English Wikipedia has an article on:

douche

Wikipedia

Etymology

Borrowed from French douche (“shower”), from Italian doccia (“shower”).

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /duːʃ/
Audio (UK): (file)
Rhymes: -uːʃ

Noun

douche (plural douches)

A jet or current of water or vapour directed upon some part of the body to benefit it medicinally; in particular, such a jet directed at the vagina for irrigation.
- 1892, Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet, Buxton and its Medicinal Waters‎, London: John Heywood:
  Massage, or kneading of the whole body, is carried out in this bath after which a steam douche or a warm spray is turned upon the affected parts, according to the nature of the case.
- 1898 Selma Lagerlöf (trans. Pauline Bancroft Flach), The Story of Gösta Berling, Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, Part II, Chapter I, p. 249
  Earth, the great mother, begins to live. Romping like a child she rises from her bath in the spring floods, from her douche in the spring rain.
- 1973, Jaroslav Hašek, chapter 4, in Cecil Parrott, transl., The Good Soldier Švejk, London: William Heinemann, page 32:
  In the bathroom, they immersed him in a tub of warm water, and then pulled him out and put him under a cold douche.
Something that produces the jet or current in the previous sense, such as a syringe.
(obsolete) A jet or spray of any liquid.
- 1895–1897, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “The Thunder-Child”, in “The War of the Worlds”, in Pearson’s, London: C. Arthur Pearson Ltd, published 1897, page 77, column 1:
  A douche of spray blinded my brother for a moment. When his eyes were clear of that he saw the monster had passed and was rushing landward.
(slang, humorous, vulgar) Ellipsis of douchebag (“objectionable person”).
- 1991, “Startin' Up a Posse”, in Attack of the Killer B's, performed by Anthrax:
  You say our records are offensive, (You're a douche, you're a douche.)
- 2002 November 27, Trey Parker, “The Biggest Douche in the Universe” (16:05), in South Park‎, season 6, episode 15, spoken by Stan:
  I am saying this to you, John Edward. You are a liar, you are a fake, and you are the biggest douche ever.
- 2019, “Never Fight a Man With a Perm”, in Joy as an Act of Resistance, performed by Idles:
  I said I've got a penchant for smokes and kicking douches in the mouth / Sadly for you my last cigarette's gone out

Derived terms

Related terms

doos

Translations

a jet or current of water or vapour directed upon some part of the body to benefit it medicinally

Arabic: وَابِل m (wābil), دُوش m (dūš)
Egyptian Arabic: دوش m (dōšš)
Bulgarian: душ (bg) m (duš)
Czech: sprcha (cs) f, intimní sprcha f, vyplachovač m
Finnish: suihku (fi)
French: douche (fr) f, douche vaginale f
German: Dusche (de) f
Greek: ντους (el) n (ntous)
Portuguese: duche (pt) m, (Brazil) ducha (pt) f
Russian: спринцо́вка (ru) f (sprincóvka), душ (ru) m (duš)
Serbo-Croatian: tuše m
Spanish: ducha (es) f

a syringe

Armenian: հոգնա (hy) (hogna)
Catalan: clister m, ènema m, clisteri m
Chinese:
Mandarin: 噴射器 / 喷射器 (zh) (pēnshèqì), 灌水器 (guànshuǐqì)
Czech: stříkačka (cs) f
Finnish: ruisku (fi), lääkeruisku
French: poire de lavement f
Japanese: 洗浄器 (せんじょうき, senjōki)
Russian: спринцо́вка (ru) f (sprincóvka)
Spanish: jeringa (es) f

jerk, idiot — see douchebag

Verb

douche (third-person singular simple present douches, present participle douching, simple past and past participle douched)

(transitive) To administer a douche to; to shower; to douse
- 1926, D. H. Lawrence, chapter II, in The Plumed Serpent, New York: Knopf:
  […] a frizzy half-white woman who looked as if she had fallen into a flour-sack, her face was so deep in powder, and her frizzy hair and her brown silk dress so douched with the white dust of it.
- 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter VI, in Capricornia‎, page 81:
  Mrs. McLash's anger was gone completely, douched not nearly so much by the beer as by this attention to her son.
- 1992, Edna O'Brien, chapter 9, in Time and Tide, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, page 66:
  The boxes would reek of the smell of rich plum cake, with brandy or sherry douched over it.
- 2007, Valerie Allen, On Farting: Language and Laughter in the Middle Ages, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, page 153:
  Tragedy acts then like a laxative […] or an aperient […] to douche our systems of humors and emotions that unbalance the soul, so that we may return to the virtuous golden mean, to homeostatic equilibrium.
(intransitive) To use a douche.
- 2023 October 1, Jordyn Holman, “Gen Z Wants Feminine Care Brands to Just Say Vagina”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:
  (In a 2002 study, 58.5 percent of Black women reported douching and 35.6 percent of Hispanic women said they did the same, compared with 26.6 percent of white women.)