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Clean

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clean

[kleen] adjective, -er, -est, adverb, -er, -est, verb
–adjective
1. free from dirt; unsoiled; unstained: She bathed and put on a clean dress.
2. free from foreign or extraneous matter: clean sand.
3. free from pollution; unadulterated; pure: clean air; clean water.
4. habitually free of dirt: Cats are considered clean animals.
5. characterized by a fresh, wholesome quality: the clean smell of pine.
6. free from all writing or marking: a clean sheet of paper.
7. having few or no corrections; easily readable: The publisher demanded clean proofs from the printer.
8. free from roughness or irregularity: He made a clean cut with a razor.
9. not ornate; gracefully spare; forceful and simple; trim; streamlined: a clean literary style; the clean lines of a ship.
10. complete; unqualified: a clean break with tradition.
11. morally pure; innocent; upright; honorable: to lead a clean life.
12. showing good sportsmanship; fair: a clean fighter.
13. inoffensive in language or content; without obscenity.
14. (of a document, record, etc.) bearing no marks of discreditable or unlawful conduct; listing no offenses: a clean driver's license.
15. Slang.
a. innocent of any crime.
b. not having a criminal record.
c. carrying or containing no evidence of unlawful activity or intent, as controlled substances, unlicensed weapons, or contraband: The agents searched the car for drugs, but it was clean.
d. not using narcotics.
16. (of a nuclear weapon) producing little or no radioactive fallout.
17. not radioactive.
18. (of a document or financial instrument) free from qualifications or restrictions: a clean bill of lading.
19. free from defects or flaws: a clean diamond.
20. free from encumbrances or obstructions.
21. neatly or evenly made or proportioned; shapely; trim: a clean profile.
22. made without any unanticipated difficulty or interference: The bank robbers made a clean getaway.
23. Chiefly Biblical. having no physical or moral blemish or carrying no taboo so as to make impure according to the laws, esp. the dietary or ceremonial laws: a clean animal; clean persons.
24. dexterously performed; adroit: a clean serve in tennis.
25. (of a jump over an obstacle) made without touching the obstacle.
26. Slang. having no direct associations, business interests, etc., that could prejudice one's official acts or decisions: The new governor is clean because he's sold his construction business and doesn't owe political favors to anyone.
27. Slang. without money or funds.
28. (of wine) having a taste that is unusually refreshing and smooth.
29. Nautical. (of an anchorage, harbor, etc.) free of obstructions or hazards (opposed to foul ).
30. (of the legs of a horse) free from injury or blemish, as capped hocks, splints, or scars.
31. Foreign Exchange. (of currency floats) not influenced by exchange-rate manipulation (opposed to dirty ).
–adverb
32. in a clean manner; cleanly: Nobody wants to box with him because he doesn't fight clean.
33. so as to be clean: This shirt will never wash clean.
34. Informal. wholly; completely; quite: The sharp carving knife sliced clean through the roast. In a year, he had gone clean through his inheritance.
–verb (used with object)
35. to make clean: Clean those dirty shoes.
36. to remove or consume the contents of; empty; clear: She sat down to dinner ravenous and within five minutes had cleaned her plate.
37. to dry-clean.
38. to remove the entrails and other inedible parts from (poultry, fish, etc.); dress.
39. Slang. to take away or win all or almost all the money or possessions of (often fol. by out): The cards were marked and I got cleaned.
40. Metallurgy. to remove the seams from (a casting) by filing or grinding.
41. Philately. to delete intentionally the cancellation from (a postage or revenue stamp).
–verb (used without object)
42. to perform or undergo a process of cleaning: This kind of fabric cleans easily. Detergents clean better than most soaps.
43. to get rid of dirt, soil, etc. (often fol. by up): to spend the morning cleaning.
44. clean out,
a. to empty in order to straighten or clean.
b. to use up; exhaust: He had cleaned out his savings.
c. Informal. to drive out by force.
d. to empty or rid (a place) of occupants, contents, etc.: Eager customers cleaned out the store on the first day of the sale. The thief cleaned out the safe.
e. Slang. to cause to lose all or almost all one's money or possessions.
45. clean up,
a. to wash or tidy up.
b. to rid of undesirable persons or features: They cleaned up the local bars.
c. to put an end to; finish: to clean up yesterday's chores.
d. Informal. to make a large profit: They cleaned up in the stock market.
46. clean full, Nautical.
a. (of a sail or sails) filled with wind; rap full.
b. (of a sailing vessel) with all sails full of wind; rap full.
47. clean house, to wipe out corruption, inefficiency, etc., as in an organization: It's time for the city government to clean house.
48. clean up one's act. act (def. 27).
49. come clean, Slang. to tell the truth, esp. to admit one's guilt.

Origin:
bef. 900; ME clene, OE clǣne pure, clear, c. OHG kleini (G klein small)


cleanness, noun


1. neat, immaculate. Clean, clear, pure refer to freedom from soiling, flaw, stain, or mixture. Clean refers esp. to freedom from soiling: a clean shirt. Clear refers particularly to freedom from flaw or blemish: a clear pane of glass. Pure refers esp. to freedom from mixture or stain: a pure metal; not diluted but pure and full strength. 7. legible. 11. unsullied, chaste, virtuous. 19. unblemished, flawless. 34. entirely, thoroughly. 35. scour, scrub, sweep, brush, wipe, mop, dust, wash, rinse, lave, deterge, purify, clear; decontaminate. Clean, cleanse refer to removing dirt or impurities. To clean is the general word with no implication of method or means: to clean windows, a kitchen, streets. Cleanse is esp. used of thorough cleaning by chemical or other technical process; figuratively it applies to moral or spiritual purification: to cleanse parts of machinery; to cleanse one's soul of guilt.


1. dirty. 17. contaminated, radioactive. 35. soil.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
Cite This Source Link To Clean
clean   (klēn)   
adj.   clean·er, clean·est
  1. Free from dirt, stain, or impurities; unsoiled.

    1. Free from foreign matter or pollution; unadulterated: clean air; clean drinking water.

    2. Not infected: a clean wound.

    3. Producing relatively little pollution: a clean fuel; a cleaner, more efficient engine.

    4. Producing relatively little radioactive fallout or contamination: a clean nuclear bomb.

    5. Not ornate or intricate; spare: "the clean lines and exquisite proportions of early modernism" (Judith Thurman).

    6. Sharply defined; clear-cut: a clean outline against the sky.

    7. Morally pure; virtuous: led a clean life.

    8. Having no marks of discredit or offense: a clean voting record.

    9. Not carrying concealed weapons or drugs.

    10. Innocent of a suspected crime.

    11. Free from narcotics addiction.

    12. Showing no evidence of using banned or performance-enhancing substances: proven to be clean before the race.

    1. Producing relatively little pollution: a clean fuel; a cleaner, more efficient engine.

    2. Producing relatively little radioactive fallout or contamination: a clean nuclear bomb.

    3. Not ornate or intricate; spare: "the clean lines and exquisite proportions of early modernism" (Judith Thurman).

    4. Sharply defined; clear-cut: a clean outline against the sky.

    5. Morally pure; virtuous: led a clean life.

    6. Having no marks of discredit or offense: a clean voting record.

    7. Not carrying concealed weapons or drugs.

    8. Innocent of a suspected crime.

    9. Free from narcotics addiction.

    10. Showing no evidence of using banned or performance-enhancing substances: proven to be clean before the race.

  2. Having no imperfections or blemishes; regular or even: a clean edge; a smooth, clean joint.

    1. Not ornate or intricate; spare: "the clean lines and exquisite proportions of early modernism" (Judith Thurman).

    2. Sharply defined; clear-cut: a clean outline against the sky.

    3. Morally pure; virtuous: led a clean life.

    4. Having no marks of discredit or offense: a clean voting record.

    5. Not carrying concealed weapons or drugs.

    6. Innocent of a suspected crime.

    7. Free from narcotics addiction.

    8. Showing no evidence of using banned or performance-enhancing substances: proven to be clean before the race.

  3. Free from clumsiness; deft; adroit: a clean throw.

  4. Devoid of restrictions or encumbrances: a clean bill of health.

  5. Thorough; complete: a clean getaway.

  6. Having few alterations or corrections; legible: clean manuscript.

  7. Blank: a clean page.

    1. Morally pure; virtuous: led a clean life.

    2. Having no marks of discredit or offense: a clean voting record.

    3. Not carrying concealed weapons or drugs.

    4. Innocent of a suspected crime.

    5. Free from narcotics addiction.

    6. Showing no evidence of using banned or performance-enhancing substances: proven to be clean before the race.

  8. Fit for all readers, listeners, or audiences; not ribald or obscene: a clean joke.

  9. Honest or fair: a clean fighter; a clean competition.

  10. Slang

    1. Not carrying concealed weapons or drugs.

    2. Innocent of a suspected crime.

    3. Free from narcotics addiction.

    4. Showing no evidence of using banned or performance-enhancing substances: proven to be clean before the race.

  11. Informal

    1. Free from narcotics addiction.

    2. Showing no evidence of using banned or performance-enhancing substances: proven to be clean before the race.

adv.   cleaner, cleanest
  1. So as to be unsoiled: wash the dishes clean.

  2. In a fair manner: played the game clean.

  3. In a clean or nonpolluting manner: a fuel that burns clean.

  4. Informal Entirely; wholly: clean forgot the appointment.

v.   cleaned, clean·ing, cleans

v.   tr.
  1. To rid of dirt, rubbish, or impurities: clean a room; clean a suit.

  2. To get rid of (impurities or dirt, for example); remove: cleaned up the trash; cleaned off the stains.

  3. To prepare (fowl or other food) for cooking, as by removing the entrails or fat.

  4. To remove the contents from; empty: cleaned my plate.

  5. Sports To lift (a barbell) from the floor to the shoulders in one motion.

v.   intr.
To undergo or perform an act of cleaning.
Phrasal Verbs:
clean out
  1. To rid of dirt, rubbish, or impurities.

  2. To empty of contents or occupants.

  3. Informal To drive or force out: cleaned out the incompetent workers.

  4. Slang To deprive completely of money or material wealth: The robbery cleaned us out.

  5. To make clean or orderly.

  6. To make oneself clean, neat, or presentable.

  7. To dispose of; settle: cleaned up the unpaid bills.

  8. Slang To make a large profit, often in a short period of time: cleaned up during the bull market.

Phrasal Verb(s):
clean out
  1. To rid of dirt, rubbish, or impurities.

  2. To empty of contents or occupants.

  3. Informal To drive or force out: cleaned out the incompetent workers.

  4. Slang To deprive completely of money or material wealth: The robbery cleaned us out.

clean up
  1. To make clean or orderly.

  2. To make oneself clean, neat, or presentable.

  3. To dispose of; settle: cleaned up the unpaid bills.

  4. Slang To make a large profit, often in a short period of time: cleaned up during the bull market.


Idiom(s):
clean house Slang To eliminate or discard what is undesirable: The scandal forced the company to clean house.

[Middle English clene, from Old English clǣne.]
clean'a·ble adj., clean'ness n.
Synonyms: These adjectives mean free from dirt: clean clothing; antiseptic surgical instruments; a cleanly pet; an immaculate tablecloth; a spotless kitchen.
Antonym: dirty
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Slang Dictionary
clean

  1. mod.
    not using drugs; not involved with drugs. : I've been clean for more than a month now.
  2. mod.
    sober; not intoxicated with drugs at the moment. (Almost the same as sense 1.) : Just being clean for a day is an accomplishment.
  3. mod.
    not breaking any law. (Police and underworld.) : I'm clean, officer. You can't charge me with anything.
  4. mod.
    not carrying a weapon. (Police and underworld.) : I frisked him. He's clean.
  5. mod.
    well-dressed. : Now there's a clean dude!
Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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clean (so)

  1. tv.
    to get all of someone's money. (See also cleaned out.) : The bill for supper cleaned me out, and we couldn't go to the flick.
  2. tv.
    to empty someone's bowels. (See also cleaned out.) : That medicine I took really cleaned me out.
Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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Word Origin & History

clean 
O.E. clæne "clean, pure," from W.Gmc. *klainoz "clear, pure," from PIE base *gel- "to gleam" (cf. Gk. glene "eyeball," O.Ir. gel "bright"). As an adj., replaced in higher senses by clear, pure, but as a verb (c.1450) it has largely usurped what once belonged to cleanse (from O.E. clænsian), which, despite its modern spelling (16c.) retains its M.E. pronunciation. Clean in the sense of "innocent" is from c.1300; that of "not lewd" is from 1867; that of "free of drug addiction" is 1950s. Clean up "make a large profit" is from 1929. To take (someone) to the cleaners "get all of (someone's) money" is from 1932.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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Legal Dictionary

Main Entry: clean
Function: adjective
: free of amendments or annotations
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law, © 1996 Merriam-Webster, Inc.
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Medical Dictionary

Main Entry: 1clean
Pronunciation: 'klEn
Function: adjective
1 a : free from dirt or pollution b : free from disease orinfectious agents clean flock> clean of TB infection>
2 : free from smudges or anything that tends to obscure clean set of fingerprints>
3 of a horse's leg : free from curbs or bunches below the hock
4 : free from drug addiction

Main Entry: 2clean
Function: transitive verb
1 : to brush (the teeth) with a cleanser (as a dentifrice)
2 : to perform dentalprophylaxis on (the teeth)
Computing Dictionary

Clean language
A lazy higher-order purely functional language from the University of Nijmegen. Clean was originally a subset of Lean, designed to be an experimental intermediate language and used to study the graph rewriting model. To help focus on the essential implementation issues it deliberately lacked all syntactic sugar, even infix expressions or complex lists,
As it was used more and more to construct all kinds of applications it was eventually turned into a general purpose functional programming language, first released in May 1995. The new language is strongly typed (Milner/Mycroft type system), provides modules and functional I/O (including a WIMP interface), and supports parallel processing and distributed processing on loosely coupled parallel architectures. Parallel execution was originally based on the PABC abstract machine.
It is one of the fastest implementations of functional languages available, partly aided by programmer annotations to influence evaluation order.
Although the two variants of Clean are rather different, the name Clean can be used to denote either of them. To distinguish, the old version can be referred to as Clean 0.8, and the new as Clean 1.0 or Concurrent Clean.
The current release of Clean (1.0) includes a compiler, producing code for the ABC abstract machine, a code generator, compiling the ABC code into either object-code or assembly language (depending on the platform), I/O libraries, a development environment (not all platforms), and documentation. It is supported (or will soon be supported) under Mac OS, Linux, OS/2, Windows 95, SunOS, and Solaris.
(http://cs.kun.nl/~clean/). E-mail: . Mailing list: .
["Clean - A Language for Functional Graph Rewriting", T. Brus et al, IR 95, U Nijmegen, Feb 1987].
["Concurrent Clean", M.C. van Eekelen et al, TR 89-18, U Nijmegen, Netherlands, 1989].
[The Jargon File]
(1995-11-08)

clean jargon

1. Used of hardware or software designs, implies "elegance in the small", that is, a design or implementation that may not hold any surprises but does things in a way that is reasonably intuitive and relatively easy to comprehend from the outside. The antonym is "grungy" or crufty.
2. To remove unneeded or undesired files in a effort to reduce clutter: "I'm cleaning up my account." "I cleaned up the garbage and now have 100 Meg free on that partition."
[The Jargon File]
(1994-12-12)

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2007 Denis Howe
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Bible Dictionary

Clean

The various forms of uncleanness according to the Mosaic law are enumerated in Lev. 11-15; Num. 19. The division of animals into clean and unclean was probably founded on the practice of sacrifice. It existed before the Flood (Gen. 7:2). The regulations regarding such animals are recorded in Lev. 11 and Deut. 14:1-21. The Hebrews were prohibited from using as food certain animal substances, such as (1) blood; (2) the fat covering the intestines, termed the caul; (3) the fat on the intestines, called the mesentery; (4) the fat of the kidneys; and (5) the fat tail of certain sheep (Ex. 29:13, 22; Lev. 3:4-9; 9:19; 17:10; 19:26). The chief design of these regulations seems to have been to establish a system of regimen which would distinguish the Jews from all other nations. Regarding the design and the abolition of these regulations the reader will find all the details in Lev. 20:24-26; Acts 10:9-16; 11:1-10; Heb. 9:9-14.

Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary
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The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
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