clean

clean adj Clean, cleanly are often confused.

Clean is applied to a person or thing that is actually free from dirt; cleanly to a person or animal whose habit or tendency is to be clean; thus, one who is cleanly, though not always able to keep clean, will never remain dirty by choice

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an ant is a very cleanly insect— Addison

}

Analogous words: cleaned, cleansed (see CLEAN vb): pure, decent, *chaste

Antonyms: dirty

Contrasted words: filthy, foul, nasty, squalid (see DIRTY)

clean vb Clean, cleanse mean to remove whatever soils, stains, or contaminates from someone or something.

Clean is the word in common and literal use for the removal of foreign matter (as dirt, litter, and debris) typically by washing, sweeping, dusting, or clearing away

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clean a dress

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{

clean a room

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{

clean off a table

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Cleanse in this relation seldom wholly loses some hint of its basic notion of making morally or spiritually pure; it is, therefore, the term of choice when the matter to be removed is or is felt as foul, polluting, or noxious or the action is rather one of purifying than of merely restoring to order, freshness, or neatness; thus, one would clean a house but, more often, cleanse a sickroom; one would cleanse a wound but clean one's teeth

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cleanse the bowels with a laxative

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Unlike clean, cleanse is common in essentially metaphoric extension in which it always retains the suggestion of removing what is vile, harmful, or obnoxious

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the brilliant campaign which cleansed Havana from yellow fever— S. H. Adams

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young soldiers who are now being cleansed of subversive ideas at Valley Forge Army Hospital— D. H. Gillis

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{

take part in an attempt to cleanse the public life of the country— Ewer

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{

the air was purer for the cleansing rain— Macdonald

}

Antonyms: soil