[In 15th c. clene, f. the adj.: it takes the place to a certain extent of the earlier vb. CLEANSE, OE. clǽnsian; and in current use to clean is more literal than to cleanse, having a more direct and obvious relation to the adj. Cf. CLEANSE 1.] To make clean.
1. trans. To free from dirt, filth or impurity.
1681. Lond. Gaz., No. 1666/2. The English Frigats are now so well Fitted and Cleaned, that none of the Algerines they meet with, escape them.
1697. Dampier, Voy. (1698), I. vi. 138. We scrubb’d and clean’d our Men of War.
1714. Gay, Trivia, I. 24. Clean your shoes.
1800. trans. Lagrange’s Chem., II. 395. A method of cleaning linen … stained by preparations of mercury.
1860. Tyndall, Glac., II. § 7. 259. The portrait … was given to a painter to be cleaned.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), III. 656. A napkin … to clean the mirror.
b. Said, by servants or operatives employed in dirty or dusty work, of making themselves clean and tidy in the afternoon or evening.
1876. Miss Braddon, J. Haggard’s Dau., ix. That afternoon toilet which was known throughout Penmoyle as ‘cleaning oneself.’
1877. N. W. Lincolnsh. Gloss., s.v., Come, Mary, get cleaned; its just tea-time.
1889. Newspr. She (the servant) had gone up stairs to clean herself.
c. Often in specific (contextual) senses: e.g., to clear arable land of weeds, esp. of the roots of creeping plants; to clear a ship’s bottom of barnacles, shells, sea-weeds, and other accretions; to remove from fish, or the like, the parts unfit for food; also refl. of foul fish, to regain good condition after spawning.
c. 1450. Voc., in Wr.-Wülcker, 609. Sarrio, to clene, cutte, or wede.
1697. Dampier, Voy. (1698), I. xvi. 443. To hale our Ship ashore, to clean her bottom.
1745. P. Thomas, Jrnl. Anson’s Voy., 49. This Day … we also clean’d our Ship’s Bottom … in order to her better sailing.
1841. Lane, Arab. Nts., I. 100. She [the maid] took the fish, and cleaned them.
1853. Soyer, Pantroph., 187. Clean and salt a wild boar.
1867. F. Francis, Angling, i. (1880), 40. About June chub go upon the shallows to clean themselves.
1886. Law Times, 151/2. Land ploughed and cleaned for sowing barley.
d. To clean the board (colloq.): to clear off all that it contains, and leave it empty; to clear it.
1884. H. C. Bunner, in Harper’s Mag., Jan., 299/2. Strikes and spares were less common then; but when a man cleaned the board he had something to be proud of.
2. absol., and intr. (for refl.).
1708. Lond. Gaz., No. 4431/15. The same Day came in … Her Majesty’s Ships … to clean.
1748. J. Lind, Lett. Navy, iii. (1757), 123. The harbour of Mahon is one of the finest in the world, capable to contain and protect all the royal navies in Europe, so that our fleets may winter there, clean and repair, without any danger of molestation.
1880. Mac Cormac, Antisept. Surg., 113. The wound had in the first place to ‘clean,’ and this cleaning was necessitated by the death of a superficial layer of tissue.
3. trans. To clean down: to clean from top to bottom, or by sweeping down. To clean up: to clean by taking up dirt or dust; to bring (a thing) up to a certain pitch or standard of cleanness: see also CLEAN sb.
1872. ‘Mark Twain,’ Roughing It, xxxvi. (Hoppe). The machine was stopped, and we cleaned up. That is to say we … washed the mud patiently away till nothing was left but the long-accumulating mass of quick-silver.
1887. Besant, Childr. Gibeon, II. i. For thirty years … not even admitting a woman to clean up.
4. To clean out: to clean by emptying; hence transf. to empty, exhaust, leave bare. Also fig.
1844. W. H. Maxwell, Sports & Adv. Scotl., ix. (1853), 93. The larder was utterly cleaned out.
1858. O. W. Holmes, Aut. Breakf.-t., 57 (Hoppe). There is great danger that a man’s first life-story shall clean him out, so to speak, of his best thoughts.
1866. Carlyle, Inaug. Addr., 180. You will see how we may clean-out the foul things in that Chancery Court.
1887. Scotsman, 19 March. The obligation to clean out the canal.
b. slang. To deprive of cash, to ‘rook.’
1812. J. H. Vaux, Flash Dict., Cleaned out, said of a gambler who has lost his last stake at play; also, of a flat who has been stript of all his money by a coalition of sharps.
1838. Dickens, O. Twist, xxxix. He has cleaned me out, but I can go and earn some more.
5. To clean away, off: to remove dirt, defilement, or the like.
a. 1839. Praed, Poems (1864), II. 3. A thousand hands, with busy toil, Clean off each ancient stain or soil.
