Some of the most “charming” Indonesian expressions are ones that use the word cuci which means ‘to wash’. Perhaps this is because Indonesians always ask each other (even people they’ve just met) if one has washed yet or not (“Sudah mandi?”). Perhaps not. Nonetheless, the word is part of some pretty funky expressions.
For example, cuci mata that literally means ‘wash eyes’ means to check something out, colloquially suggestive of being on the hunt for someone good looking, normally referring to the opposite sex. So you can use this in a joking way when someone asks you what you’re going to do when you go out somewhere.
Cuci gudang literally means to wash a building, which means ‘clearance sale’ and you’ll often see this in the windows of big retail stores.
Cuci uang colloquially doesn’t mean to wash money but to money launder and is commonly featured in front page newspaper articles with corruption still rife all over the archipelago.
If you wish to absolve yourself from guilt for something, you can just cuci tangan (wash hands) – this is also a common word to come across in political tabloids.
Indonesia is a country that is currently experiencing an explosion of developed world ‘lifestyle’ diseases such as obesity and diabetes, the term cuci darah (‘wash blood’) is commonly heard, This means ‘dialysis’.
In the digital age, it’s less common to develop film here but when I arrived in Bali in the 1990s I would often need to go to a photo shop to “wash film” (cuci pilem), meaning to develop prints – now this term totally makes sense.
A very rare expression that has been pretty much relegated to dictionaries is cuci leher which translates as ‘wash neck’. This is the most bizarre of all of the cuci expressions as this one means ‘to eat well’, I guess meaning that you’ve filled your stomach so much that it reaches your neck!
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