What it means
لباسشویی (lebâs-shui) means “washing machine,” the household appliance that washes your clothes. It is a compound built from لباس (lebâs), meaning “clothing” (a word of Arabic origin), and شویی (shui), from the verb “to wash,” so it literally reads as “clothes-washing.” The full, more formal name is ماشین لباسشویی (mâshin-e lebâs-shui), but in everyday speech people just say لباسشویی. It pairs neatly with its kitchen cousin ظرفشویی (zarf-shui), the “dishwasher,” which is built the same way. Out on the street, the same word can also point to a laundry or dry-cleaning shop, but at home it almost always means the machine.
How to use it
- لباسشویی رو روشن کن (lebâs-shui ro roshan kon) “turn on the washing machine”
- لباسا رو ریختم تو لباسشویی (lebâsâ ro rikhtam tu lebâs-shui) “I put the clothes in the washing machine”
- لباسشوییمون خراب شده (lebâs-shui-mun kharâb shode) “our washing machine has broken down”
- ماشین لباسشویی جدید خریدیم (mâshin-e lebâs-shui-ye jadid kharidim) “we bought a new washing machine”
Cultural note
A washing machine is a standard part of any modern Iranian household, usually a front-loading automatic model tucked into the kitchen or on the balcony. Older homes and smaller apartments sometimes still keep a simpler twin-tub machine, where you move the wash from one drum to a separate spinner. Drying is almost always done on a clothesline or a folding rack rather than a dryer, since stand-alone dryers are far less common in Iran.