whites and other color words as clothing of particular colors

The dictionary lists one sense of 'whites' as white clothing. But no parallel sense is listed for 'reds' and other color words. I am wondering whether this sense of 'whites' can be generalized to other color words, so that 'reds' means 'red clothing' and 'blacks' means 'black clothing', etc.

I'd appreciate your help.


Whites is used to mean "white clothing", while coloreds (and sometimes darks) is used to mean "non-white clothing" (sense 2, here).

These uses have conventionalized to the point where they are included in dictionaries. The reason they have conventionalized is because there is a standard reason to employ them: people regularly divide their laundry into white laundry and colored laundry.

The use of 'reds' or 'blues' in such a manner is not conventional, and thus not mentioned in dictionaries. This is because people do not characteristically wash just red or blue clothing. There is thus little need for this type of use.

That being said you can use colored terms in this way in specific contexts where someone is washing just red or blue laundry. But participants in the conversation should know this or be able to easily infer this. Such a use would be an example of non-conventionalized deferred interpretation.