What it means
دوش (dush) means “shower,” covering both the act of showering and the fixture, the shower head you stand under. It is a loanword that came into Persian from French douche during the modernization era of the 19th and 20th centuries, and it has been fully naturalized for so long that almost no one thinks of it as foreign. You take a دوش the way you take a shower, usually with the verb گرفتن (gereftan, to take): دوش گرفتن means “to shower.” A close relative is حموم (hammum), the bathroom or bath itself, while دوش is specifically the shower.
How to use it
- میرم یه دوش بگیرم (miram ye dush begiram) “I'm going to take a shower”
- دوش آب گرم نداره (dush âb-e garm nadâre) “the shower has no hot water”
- صبح زود دوش گرفتم (sobh-e zud dush gereftam) “I showered early in the morning”
- سر دوش خرابه (sar-e dush kharâbe) “the shower head is broken”
Cultural note
Many older Iranian bathrooms have a shower area that is simply part of the open, tiled wet room rather than a closed cubicle, with a floor drain and a دوش mounted on the wall. The word حموم (hammum) still carries echoes of the traditional public bathhouse, but in everyday modern homes showering with a دوش is the normal daily routine. People often pair دوش with وان (vân, bathtub) when describing a bathroom, since not every home has both.