dirty linen

1. 1.

   personal matters that could be embarrassing if made public

   Synonymsdirty laundry

   Broaderpersonal business

Questions about dirty linen

What does dirty linen mean?

dirty linen means "personal matters that could be embarrassing if made public".

What is another word for dirty linen?

Close synonyms include dirty laundry. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is dirty linen a common word?

dirty linen is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.