[f. vbl. phr. to wash up: see WASH v. 1 f.]
1. An act of washing table utensils after a meal. In quots. attrib.
1884. Health Exhib. Catal., 93/2. Butler’s Pantry and Wash-up Sinks.
1900. ‘H. Lawson,’ On Track, 128. Grease inches deep in great black patches about the fireplace ends of the huts, where wash-up and ‘boiling’ water is thrown.
b. ? dial. A washing-up place, scullery.
1869. Blackmore, Lorna D., xi. He made even mother laugh … and Betty Muxworthy roared in the wash-up.
2. Mining. The washing of a collected quantity of ore; the quantity of gold that has been obtained by washing.
1890. ‘R. Boldrewood,’ Miner’s Right, xxiii. As soon as we had finished the next wash-up, I was to go back to Yatala.
1898. Westm. Gaz., 16 June, 4/3. The gold consisted of about a quarter of a million dollars in dust and three-quarters of a million in drafts. The estimate of the wash-up varies from twelve millions to thirty millions.
3. A dead body washed up by the waves.
a. 1903. ‘H. S. Merriman,’ Last Hope, i. Passen thinks it’s [sc. the grave is] over there by the yew-tree—but he’s wrong. That there one was a wash-up found by old Willem the lighthouse keeper one morning early.
