Let’s learn the different uses of cleanup, clean off, and clean out. Clean up means to make a place tidy. The kitchen is a mess I need to clean up. Can you help me clean up after dinner? But it can also mean to make a lot of money. He cleaned up at the casino. It also means to fix your life. She used to party hard, but she cleaned up her life. Clean off means to remove something from a surface. I cleaned the mud off my shoes. He cleaned off the table before dinner. Clean up after means to tidy what someone else left. I always clean up after my kids. Cleaning up after a party is the worst. Clean out means to empty and clean something inside. I cleaned out the fridge. We cleaned out the garage last weekend. But it can also mean to steal everything. The burglars cleaned out the shop. My ex cleaned out my bank account.
Brutal. We can think of “clean” as a kind of general term for many activities. Aside from “clean,” we can use a number of more exact verbs. So, we have a group of verbs. The question leads us to an important point. We have a group of verbs. Transitive means to take a direct object. Now, let us take some of the other verbs we explored earlier. The main difference between the statements is in the amount of shared information. If the speaker and listener both know what is being discussed, then the object is not necessary. Today, you learned a few basic ideas that are important for talking about cleaning. You learned some related verbs and how to use them with or without an object. The next step will be to develop more complex sentences that involve adverbs and prepositions. John Russell wrote this lesson for VOA Learning English. broom - n. bookshelf - n. In November 2024 forty Leaders in Clean from around the world met in Portugal. Our aim for this gathering was:A celebration of what the community has achieved; taking stock of where we are now; and envisioning what we’d like to have happen for the future of Clean.One outcome of this gathering was the decision to create a statement of the principles of ‘clean’. A sub-group continued to meet online to develop the idea.We knew David Grove had listed his Philosophy and Principles of Clean Language many years ago, and we wanted something shorter, simpler and more accessible. To make the task manageable, we limited the scope to observable principles for ‘being clean’. After several discussions, we settled on the four principles below.These principles were circulated to others in the Leaders in Clean group for feedback and further refinement.The agreed version below was formally launched at an online meeting on 28 May 2025 under a creative commons licence. We can aspire to be ‘perfectly clean’ but in practice it is unattainable. Therefore the principles below are designed to apply close to the completely-clean end of the continuum.Rather than defining Clean by beliefs or philosophy, we have specified a set of actionable and observable principles. These enable people to make conscious decisions about when and to what degree they aim to ‘be clean’ or to communicate in other-than-clean ways.Being clean is not inherently beneficial. Clean is not ‘good’, just as leading is not ‘bad’. The value of Clean Language depends on the context, the purpose for the interaction and viewpoint of those making the determination. Be generic and apply to all well-known Clean processes (e.g. Do not need to apply to an entire process. Its congener in Middle High German meant “brave, beautiful.” On that occasion and on several others, I noted that words may change their meaning in a truly incomprehensible, even bizarre way. The Old English for clean was clæne (with a long vowel in the root; æ had the value of a in Modern Engl. man). Dictionaries offer a long array of glosses for clæne: “pure, chaste, innocent; unencumbered, unfettered; hallowed; clear; open; honorable, true; acute, sagacious, intellectual.” All of them have the same nucleus: “clear; free from dirt, filth, or impediment.” The senses have been extracted or abstracted from various contexts, and, obviously, the list could be enriched by many more synonyms. However, one should beware of shrinking it to one or two basic words, and the three glosses given above in bold will prove their value in the analysis of German. The adverb clean, also from clæne, is not very common in today’s English, but you are clean crazy and especially I clean forgot about our appointment sound both permissible and idiomatic. Clean (adverb) means “absolutely,” as though the platter has been licked clean; compare pure nonsense, pure folly. (Russian chistyi means “clean,” while the adverb nachisto, with stress on the first syllable, means “completely”; the path from clean to empty and absolute is common.) Today, clean usually refers to concrete things. Clean is a West Germanic word with possible cognates outside Germanic. The same can be said about a few other kl-words. The Old Icelandic form both Skeat and Murray had in view can be partly disregarded, for the adjective, still extant in all the Scandinavian languages, was borrowed from German (see below), and the verb klína “to smear,” though related to clæne, needs special discussion. One can see that among the glosses for Old Engl. clæne the adjective “small” did not turn up. Nor did Old High German klein mean either “small” or “little.” There, the story began with “smooth,” hence “shining.” The next attested senses are “pure” (for instance, wine could be called klein) and “neat, dainty, delicate; high; thin (about a person’s figure and voice); slight, frail; careful; witty; clever (that is, able to make small distinctions, discriminating),” and, finally, just “small.” Some of the meanings attested in the history of German could be predicted from the English list above: consider “acute, sagacious, intellectual.” “Witty” is especially characteristic. “Small” for klein does not antedate Early Modern German and could not be the original sense of clean and klein, especially because the related forms in Old Saxon and Old Frisian also meant “dainty.” There is an agreement among philologists that the starting point in the semantic history of clean was “smooth; shining, bright,” recorded in Old High German. The way from “smooth, bright” to “clean” seems to be natural (not predictable, but natural!). With “bright, shining” in view, historical linguists began to look for the Indo-European root with this meaning. Some words suggested themselves at once: Latin galbus “greenish-yellow,” possibly a borrowing from Celtic, as in Irish glan “clean, pure; radiant,” Classical Greek glênos “bright object; wonder,” and even geláō “I laugh” (with transference of the idea of brightness, radiance to a spiritual state, whence the further change of meaning to “cheerfulness of mind, mirth, laughter”). Such is the wording in the Universal Dictionary of the English Language by Henry Cecil Wyld. The above reconstruction is plausible. The Greek word for “laughter” is usually associated with radiance, though from the historical perspective laughter and mirth need not be connected. (Consult, if you care, my post of 10 December 2014 on a laughing etymologist.) Looking for ancient roots is a dangerous occupation (as admitted in the previous post), and one sometimes wonders where to stop. The great Friedrich Kluge agreed that West Germanic klainiz, the progenitor of clean and klein, meant “smooth” but went a step farther and connected the root gel- with that in Greek gloiós “resin, glue” (his gloss was “fat oil”). Grease! The joy of it! Gloiós is, naturally, related to Latin gluten “glue,” from which, by way of Old French, English has glue. Another sticky kl-word! Nothing in this group, outside the onomatopoeic department, seems to be gluten-free (GF). One can return to Engl. clay, Russian glei, and the other words familiar to us by this time. Kluge’s idea became dogma almost immediately after it was offered. Old Engl. clæne became Modern Engl. clean by a series of regular phonetic changes (long æ by umlaut from ā, from ai, became open ē, which yielded the modern vowel by the Great Vowel Shift; the spelling ea, as opposed to ee, still reminds us of the open vowel in Middle English). But in the south of the German-speaking world the adjective klīn is widespread. It is a synonym of klein, and its ī causes trouble. Most probably, klīn is not a variant but a synonym of klein. Now is the time to touch on the Scandinavian words allied to clean. Old Icelandic klénn “fine, luxurious” and the similar adjectives in the continental languages are not native there, but the verb klína “to smear” is. Quibbling aside, we can state with some confidence that clean is a West Germanic adjective with gl-congeners outside Germanic. Of course, this confidence will last only until a better suggestion displaces it. The grade ī is represented by a regional German adjective and an Icelandic verb. Why German has klein und klīn remains unknown, but words for “small” tend to be “sound symbolic” and are often pronounced on a high note, especially in addressing children. Besides, the vowel i typically crops up in adjectives referring to small size. Image credits: (1) “Broken bridge” by fialex, Public Domain via Pixabay. (2) Chattanooga - “Lookout Mountain - Rock City - Fairyland Caverns - Mother Goose Village - Jack Sprat” by Jared, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr. (3) Friedrich Kluge by unknown, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. Try: Learn all the parts of speech for different words and understand how to use them in the English language
NounDefinition:as a noun, 'clean' is less commonly used but can refer to an act of cleaning.Examples:The car is due for a clean.I gave the kitchen a thorough clean this morning.After a good clean, the old lamp looked brand new.Tips:the noun form of 'clean' is less common than its other forms and might sound more natural in British English than in American English.
AdjectiveDefinition:as an adjective, 'clean' describes something that is free from dirt, marks, or impurities. It can also describe something that is morally pure or free from wrongdoing.Examples:She wore a clean white dress to the party.His record is clean, with no criminal history.After the rain, the air felt clean and refreshing.Tips:'clean' can also describe a break or cut that is smooth and even, as in a 'clean break.' It can also refer to something done fairly, as in a 'clean fight.'
VerbDefinition:as a verb, 'clean' means to make something free from dirt, marks, or impurities.Examples:Please clean your room before going out.I need to clean the dishes after dinner.She spent the afternoon cleaning the garage.Tips:'clean up' is a phrasal verb that means to tidy or make neat.