Human Washing Machine

December 4, 2025 @ 12:44 am · Filed by under Headlinese, Parsing

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Headline on NDTV, Nov. 29, 2025: "Japan Unveils Human Washing Machine, Now You Can Get Washed Like Laundry."


From François Lang, who sent this item to me:

I initially parsed this headline as a human [washing machine]; only after looking at the photo did I realize it was a [human washing] machine. Another headline that would have been made a lot clearer via simple hyphen!

 

Selected readings

"Quadrilingual Washlet Instructions" (8/22/08)

"Japanese hi-tech toilet instructions" (1/19/17)

"Advanced mission" (6/19/21)

 …and there are many other entertaining appliances for the bathroom.

"Are you OK?" (11/2/25)

December 4, 2025 @ 12:44 am · Filed by under Headlinese, Parsing


2 Comments »

  1. Laura Morland said,

    December 4, 2025 @ 12:56 am

    For the curious, here's how the machine-that-washes-humans works:
    https://youtu.be/AfNrAIITDi0?si=53f0Ay69TFb33qZz

  2. Julian said,

    December 4, 2025 @ 6:07 am

    But there's no tumble dryer….

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