dishpan hands

dishpan hands

A condition of the hands in which they are red, raw, dry, scaly, and/or painful due to sensitivity or prolonged exposure to water and cleaning materials. I don't mind the long hours or the repetitive work of washing dishes for the restaurant, but these dishpan hands are really killing me.
See also: hand
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • wear off
  • wear off )
  • canary
  • canary in a coal mine
  • miner's canary
  • be a ghost of (someone's or something's) former self
  • be a shadow of (someone's or something's) former self
  • be a shadow/ghost of your/its former self
  • farmer's tan
  • become a shadow of (someone's or something's) former self
References in periodicals archive
Trent Taylor (second from left) shows off his dishpan hands, while Kendall Cupskey (left), Tom Buurs and Jim Henderson (right) smile after a job well done, Proceeds from the luncheons and from special donations totalled $2,500.
..when other girls had developed what American advertising in the 1950s called "dishpan hands," mine would still be youthful, smooth, and lovely.
Otherwise, nothing else new, except I'm getting dishpan hands and whenever I call my husband in to open a can or something, he cuts himself, so we've decided it's a good idea for both husbands and wives to stay out of the kitchen.
"I thought I was going to have dishpan hands for the rest of my life," Dailey said, referring to his earlier darkroom days.
retained her green gloves during the evening as an outward and visible sign that there was company" (313).(36) Like her suitor, Miss Skiffins knows full well the hand's capability to signify: these gloves ensure her genteel incapacity for domestic labor as much as they conceal her dishpan hands (she "washed up the tea-things, in a trifling lady-like amateur manner that compromised none of us.
Contact dermatitis differs from "dishpan hands" because "dishpan hands" is an irritant reaction not an allergic reaction.