to wash a part of the body: the hands, feet, face, or eyes
This is the everyday verb for rinsing one part of the body clean with water. In the Gospels people wash their hands before eating (Mark 7:3, Matthew 15:2), wash their face (Matthew 6:17), wash their eyes (John 9), and, most memorably, wash their feet (John 13). It is never used for scrubbing a full body or laundering clothes.
That narrowness is the point. Greek kept three related "wash" verbs apart, and this one holds the middle place:
- This verb washes a part of the body: the hands, the feet, the face, or the eyes.
- Its neighbor λούω bathes the whole person.
- And πλύνω washes objects, above all clothing.
John sets two of them side by side in one sentence: a person who has bathed all over needs only to wash his feet (John 13:10). The whole-body bath is one word, the rinse of the feet is this one.
In the foot-washing scene the act stays literal (real water, real feet), yet John loads it with meaning. Jesus takes the servant's task, and when Peter objects, Jesus answers that unless he washes Peter, Peter has no share with him (John 13:8). The verb itself never leaves the plain sense of rinsing feet clean, but the story turns that ordinary rinse into a lesson about humility and belonging.