Saving energy at home

The twenty-seventh entry is a máquina de secar roupa, and the object is plainer in Portuguese than in English. The Portuguese name says what the machine is for, and it is built the way a máquina de lavar and a máquina de lavar loiça are built, with the purpose spelled out behind the noun. English named the thing after its motion instead, and the care label inside a jumper still gives the verb whole: « do not tumble dry ». What is worth carrying away, though, is the shelf of idioms English keeps from the days before either machine existed, because not one of them survives a literal crossing. « It will all come out in the wash » promises that a muddle will sort itself out, and concerns no laundry at all. « To hang somebody out to dry » is to leave them exposed while everyone else walks away. « A washout » is a failure, or a day rained off. Only one member of the family is shared, lavar roupa suja against « to wash one’s dirty linen in public »; for the rest, the picture has to be thrown away and a new one found.