kitchen sinkn.adj.
/ˌkɪtʃ(ᵻ)n ˈsɪŋk/, U.S. /ˌkɪtʃ(ə)n ˈsɪŋk/ A. n.† 2. figurative. As the type of something degraded or characterized by vice or corruption. Cf. sink n.1 2, sewer n.1 2b. Obsolete.
1. A sink in a kitchen, used for washing dirty dishes, disposing of waste water, etc.
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the world > physical sensation > cleanness and dirtiness > cleaning > washing > washing table utensils > [noun] > kitchen sink
kitchen sink1582
washing-stone1585
jaw-box-
1582 R. Browne Treat. 23 Matt. in R. Harrison & R. Browne Writings (1953) 194 Looke further into..Logike, & you shall Finde it..so filled with good order, as is a tubb of kitchen sincke draffe.
1767 St. James's Chron. 17 Nov. Mr. Ward having the Presence of Mind to roll up all the Clothes together, and carry them down Stairs Into the Kitchen Sink, he happily extinguished the Fire without any further Damage.
1873 Young Englishwoman May 259/3 Unwholesome smells—which I found all proceeded from (what Miss Nightingale calls) that abomination, the kitchen sink.
1930 Archit. Rec. Jan. 13/1 Until a few years ago, the kitchen sink would have been made of sheet zinc fitted over a box made by the carpenter.
2015 A. Flourney Turner House 78 He lay on his stomach underneath the kitchen sink, breathing in mildew and straining to snake the plug for her new alkaline water-filtration system to a power outlet.
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1803 Lit. Jrnl. 16 Aug. 175 All her merits as a monarch and a woman could not save her name [sc. Bess] from falling into the kitchen sink.
1888 R. Kipling Under Deodars (1889) 5 All his ideas and powers of conversation..are taken from him by this—this kitchen-sink of a Government.
B. adj.
1. Chiefly in attributive use.
a. Art. Designating a style of British painting of the mid 20th cent. in which scenes from the domestic life of the contemporary urban working class are depicted in a realist style that emphasizes the drab, the mundane, and the squalid; (also) designating an artist, or the group of artists, painting in this style. Frequently in kitchen-sink school, kitchen-sink painter.Exponents of this style of painting, which typically depicted cramped domestic interiors and collections of everyday household objects, include John Bratby (1928–92), Derrick Greaves (b. 1927), Edward Middleditch (1923–87), and Jack Smith (1928–2011).
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society > leisure > the arts > the arts in general > [adjective] > specific movement or period
classical1546
pastoral1566
classic1597
Medicean1652
romantic1812
tedesco1814
realistic1829
realista1832
pseudo-classic1833
classicist1838
pseudo-classical1838
renaissant1839
modernist1848
post-classic1850
post-classical1851
pseudo-Gothic1853
classicizing1865
classicistic1866
serio-grotesque1873
geometric1877
neoclassical1877
modernistic1878
neoclassic1878
pseudo-archaic1878
William Morris1883
protocorinthian1884
veristic1884
William and Mary1886
Yuan1888
romanticistic1889
veritistic1894
auto-destructive1895
pre-Romantic1895
Trajanic1906
neo-realistic1909
New Romantic1909
neo-realist1912
futuristic1915
postmodern1916
Dada1918
Dadaist1918
surrealist1918
proto-Romantic1920
expressionistic1921
modernista1924
super-realist1925
superrealistic1925
postmodernist1926
proto-Baroque1926
post-symbolist1927
pre-modernist1927
surrealistic1930
Renaissancist1932
Colonial Revival1934
neo-baroque1935
socialist-realist1935
social realist1949
social realistic1949
kitchen sink1954
William IV1955
formalistic1957
Zhdanovite1957
neo-Dadaist1960
neo-modernist1960
William Morrisy1960
neo-Dada1962
Zhdanovist1966
conceptual1969
conceptualist1973
po-mo1987
pathetic1990
1954 D. Sylvester in Encounter Dec. 62/2 It is evident that neither objectivity nor abstraction is the aim of the young painters of the kitchen-sink school.
1959 Listener 19 Feb. 340/3 ‘Kitchen sink’ painting is not an exclusive English phenomenon: it originated in France, with Rebeyrolle and Minaux.
1965 Punch 26 May 762/1 The ‘Kitchen-Sink’ tag..began as descriptive heading for a post-war school of painters (nudity, violence, squalor, blasphemy, subversiveness and distortion are somehow morally OK qualities in the visual arts) and only later became a pejorative title for a school of playwrights.
2018 J. Sperling Writer of Our Time i. 44 Many of the Kitchen Sink painters came to resent Berger's paternalism.
b. Designating a genre of British drama, film, and narrative fiction popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s characterized by gritty and often abrasive depictions of working-class life and the problems faced by working-class people; (also) designating a play, film, novel, etc., in this ɡenre. Originally somewhat depreciative. Cf. angry young man n. at angry adj. Compounds 2. Frequently in kitchen sink drama.Originating as a reaction against the ‘drawing-room’ plays of dramatists like Noël Coward and Terence Rattigan, works in this genre are often set in industrial towns in the north of England, and are characterized by disillusioned young protagonists, regional accents, and controversial social themes such as homelessness, adultery, and abortion. Examples include John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1956), Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey (1959), John Braine's Room at the Top (1957), and Alan Sillitoe's Saturday Night & Sunday Morning (1958). The designation ‘kitchen sink’ was originally used of the genre by critics with depreciative or condescending intent, but was rapidly adopted in a neutral or positive sense, without regard to, or in implicit denial of, its negative connotations.
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society > leisure > the arts > literature > style of language or writing > [adjective] > other specific style
judicial1532
heroic1590
judiciary1603
wild1645
heroi-comic1708
mock-heroic1708
heroi-comical1712
flebilea1734
prosai-comi-epic1749
lusory1779
sulphureous1791
harlequinic1804
mock-heroical1825
newspaperish1825
marmoreal1892
kailyard1895
freestyle1906
paperback1921
nouny1926
Time-ese1947
nounal1952
kitchen sink1959
effectist1961
writerly1974
dirty realist1984
society > leisure > the arts > performance arts > drama > a play > [adjective] > types of play
gowneda1661
monodramatic1801
one-act1801
Palais Royala1839
knockabout1892
two-part1894
uncut1896
psychodramatic1927
cliff-hanging1930
no-budget1937
kitchen sink1959
single-set1961
society > leisure > the arts > performance arts > cinematography > a film > type of film > [adjective] > other types
costumed1851
foreign language1904
first run1910
Keystone1912
photodramatic1914
serial1915
coming of age1919
edge-of-your-seat1922
psychodramatic1927
omnibus1928
straight1936
low-budget1937
no-budget1937
screwball1937
Ealing1939
blockbusting1943
private eye1946
film noir1952
white telephone1952
portmanteau1953
uncut1953
anthology1955
three-D1955
Hammer1958
noir1958
co-production1959
kitchen sink1959
kidult1960
docudrama1961
cinéma vérité1963
maudit1963
filmi1965
indie1968
triple-X1969
XXX1969
drama-documentary1970
cheapie1973
gross-out1973
high concept1973
chopsocky1974
hard R1974
buddy movie1975
sci-fi1977
mondo1979
hack-and-slash1981
microbudget1981
hack-and-slay1982
slice-and-dice1982
fly on the wall1983
psychotronic1983
noirish1985
Mad Max1986
stoner1987
bonkbusting1993
straight to DVD1997
1959 Tatler 18 Mar. 561/1 Shelagh Delaney's play in the ‘kitchen sink’ genre is set in a Salford slum.
1960 Times 15 Mar. 13/6 Mr. Ronald Duncan is reported as saying that the English Stage Company..presents only left wing ‘kitchen sink’ drama.
1960 Guardian 28 Oct. 9/5 The day of the social-realist, kitchen sink advertisement has dawned.
1973 Black World Apr. 41 I wasn't going to write any more Black ‘kitchen sink’ dramas.
2014 Stage 27 Mar. 19/3 Here, Wesker's play becomes more than a classic kitchen sink drama and conveys a message to today's audience.
2. attributive. Characterized by the indiscriminate use of all available elements or resources. Frequently in kitchen-sink approach. Cf. earlier throw the kitchen sink at at Phrases 1b.
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1961 G. J. Yoxall in Describing Managerial Work (Proc. Conf. Nassau Inn, Princeton, N.J.) 13 Question: Are you advocating the shotgun approach? Answer: No,…if the shotgun approach is equivalent to the kitchen sink approach, certainly not.
1977 R. Ginsberg Welcome to Philosophy! vii. 137 Avoid the kitchen-sink method of writing exams. This consists of dumping everything you know or have heard about into your answer no matter what the question calls for.
2000 N.Y. Times 25 June 1/3 The Police Department continues to be regarded as an aggressive force that has not retreated..from its kitchen-sink strategy of attacking crime.
2015 S. Graham in J. Dougherty & T. O'Donnell Web Writing 154 In their zeal to create the perfect game they had adopted a kind of kitchen-sink approach.
Phrases
P1. Originally U.S. Used in humorous or hyperbolic phrases as an example of the last or most unlikely thing to be considered or used.
a. everything but the kitchen sink and variants: everything imaginable. Cf. everything but the kitchen stove at kitchen stove n. 2.
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the world > relative properties > kind or sort > generality > [noun] > the generality > everything > everything imaginable
everything but the kitchen stove1897
everything but the kitchen sink1918
1918 Syracuse (N.Y.) Herald 5 May 25/4 The stations are full of people trying to get out and the streets blocked with perambulators, bird cages and ‘everything but the kitchen sink’.
1958 Wall St. Jrnl. 23 Oct. 4/4 Gen. Trudeau said the military services often slow down development of new weapons ‘because we are such perfectionists that we want everything but the kitchen sink in a weapon’.
1965 ‘E. McBain’ Doll x. 128 Brown began searching. ‘Everything in here but the kitchen sink,’ he said.
2016 Daily Mirror (Nexis) 26 Feb. 52 Ant and Dec threw everything apart from the kitchen sink into a highly entertaining return of Saturday Night Takeaway on ITV.
b. to throw the kitchen sink at and variants: to direct all conceivable resources at (a problem, task, opponent, etc.); to throw everything at.
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1938 Wisconsin State Jrnl. (Madison) 28 May 3/3 Now go, before my miracle of self-control collapses and I start throwing the kitchen sink at you!
1993 A. M. Buitrago in M. Stocker Confronting Cancer, Constructing Change 86 The conference report recommended throwing the kitchen sink at it—massive doses of multiple chemotherapy and radiation.
2010 Time Out N.Y. 11 Nov. 112/4 Noted designer and performer Iver Findlay and Marit Sandmark throw the full kitchen sink of text-collage, multimedia provocation and dance-theater unconventionality at a live-art work.
2014 Chess Sept. 22/2 After that further disappointment, Kramnik threw the kitchen sink at Baramidze.
c. In various phrases and expressions with the sense ‘every last conceivable thing; absolutely everything’.
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1948 Oakland (Calif.) Tribune 28 Apr. 38/2 (advt.) Camera, Kodak Recomar 18 with 35mm Kodachrome back and the whole kitchen sink, $125.
1967 B. Cleeve Violent Death Bitter Englishman xi. 98 Jerry putting down tracers, star shells, bangalore torpedoes, four-pounders, the bloody kitchen sink.
1976 Financial Times 17 Dec. 32/8 The revamped management at the Burton Group has not been tempted to throw the kitchen sink into the figures for 1975-76.
2005 L. Yep Tiger's Blood i. 6 Whatcha got in there? The kitchen sink?
P2. Used in various phrases referring (with varying degrees of literal meaning) to the kitchen sink as a metonym for housework or domestic drudgery, typically in criticizing the traditional assumptions that menial household chores are appropriate responsibilities for a woman, and that women are naturally suited to performing them. Esp. in chained (also tied, etc.) to the kitchen sink and variants: confined to or trapped in a life of unending domestic drudgery. Also in barefoot, pregnant, and chained to the kitchen sink and variants. Cf. a woman's place is in the home at woman n. Phrases 1f.
ΘΚΠ
society > occupation and work > work > [noun] > women's work
distaffc1386
woman's work1890
kitchen sink1926
kinder, kirche, küche1935
1926 E. R. Wembridge in Survey 1 Dec. 297/2 Daisy could not adjust herself..to the picture of herself as a Mrs. Finch, perpetually chained to the kitchen sink.
1969 Canberra Times 19 Aug. 14/6 I thoroughly enjoy cooking, as I think a lot of women do, I just don't believe women want to be tied to the kitchen sink.
1969 Guardian 6 Nov. 9/5 A situation in which married women find it impossible to return to work and have to return once more to the kitchen sink.
1994 R. Porter London xv. 344 Demobbed majors dusted down their brollies; wives left munitions work and went back to the kitchen sink.
2004 Daily Mail (Nexis) 30 Oct. (Weekend section) 19 He is the original male chauvinist pig who likes his women barefoot, pregnant and chained to the kitchen sink.
Derivatives
ˌkitchen-ˈsinkery n. The qualities or outlook regarded as characteristic of kitchen-sink drama, esp. grittiness, bleakness, drabness.
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society > leisure > the arts > the arts in general > [noun] > specific movement or period
cinquecento1762
classicality1784
romanticism1821
classicism1827
Renaissance1836
classicalism1840
Queen Anne1863
classic1864
renascence1868
classical1875
modernism1879
New Romanticism1885
Colonial Revival1887
shogun1889
super-realism1890
verism1892
neoclassicism1893
veritism1894
social realism1898
camerata1900
peasantism1903
proto-Renaissance1903
Biedermeier1905
expressionism1908
futurism1909
Georgianism1911
Dada1918
Dadaism1918
German expressionism1920
expressionismus1925
Negro Renaissance1925
super-realism1925
settecento1926
surrealism1927
Neue Sachlichkeit1929
Sachlichkeit1930
neo-Gothicism1932
socialist realism1933
modernismus1934
Harlem Renaissance1940
organicism1945
avant-gardism1950
nouvelle vague1959
bricolage1960
kitchen-sinkery1964
black art1965
neo-modernism1966
Yuan1969
conceptualism1970
sound art1972
pre-modernism1976
Afrofuturism1993
society > leisure > the arts > literature > style of language or writing > [noun] > other specific styles
mock-heroica1668
far-fetch1813
periodicalism1837
pastoralism1842
book-speech1852
nounism1904
regionalism1909
Time-ese1952
kitchen-sinkery1964
nukespeak1979
1964 Listener 16 Apr. 624/1 We've been attacked for too much pessimism, sordidness, and kitchen-sinkery.
1969 B. Turner Circle of Squares i. 7 The longest-ever season of kitchen-sinkery on our stages.
2017 @BoJoHaram 31 July in twitter.com (accessed 20 Aug. 2019) Yes! Loachian dreary kitchen sinkery with a broad comic turn crowbarred in! Watchable!!!
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2020; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
kitchen sinkv.
/ˌkɪtʃ(ᵻ)n ˈsɪŋk/, U.S. /ˌkɪtʃ(ə)n ˈsɪŋk/ 1. transitive. Business. To announce losses and other negative financial results all at the same time in the hope of lessening their impact.
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1992 Sunday Tel. 20 Sept. 32/6 Bristol & West..will tomorrow report a 10-fold increase in bad debts for the first six months of the year... Although B&W's provisions reflects its exposure to repossessions in the hard-hit southern property market, FitzSimons appears to have bitten the bullet by ‘kitchen-sinking’ his bad debts.
2018 Tel. (Nexis) 31 Jan. Capita's new boss Jonathan Lewis has ‘kitchen-sinked’ it this morning, delivering the triple whammy of a profits warning, rights issue and dividend suspension.
2. transitive. To make (something) excessively elaborate or laboured; to overwork (something).
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1992 Mag. Fantasy Sci. Fiction Oct. 22 Unfortunately, Jablokov has kitchen-sinked this one a bit, by having the culmination of the novel be a voyage to Jupiter.
2017 @NeoWestchester 18 Feb. in twitter.com (accessed 23 July 2019) Labeling in a cartoon really has to be minimal, and straightforward... Don't kitchen sink it.
3. intransitive. To bring up all of one's grievances or complaints in an argument or quarrel with someone about an unrelated issue. Also transitive in the same sense.
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1992 USA Today 15 Oct. 2 d/1 I've learned not to ‘kitchen sink’: throw all kinds of other issues into an argument until it explodes.
2014 @VelveteenMama 13 Sept. in twitter.com (accessed 23 July 2019) She knows what to say to upset me & for someone usually so poised & stoic she let loose & kitchen-sinked me.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2020; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.adj.1582
v.1992