Then his sallow face brightened, for the hall had been carefully furnished, and was very clean. There was a neat hat-and-umbrella stand, and the stranger's weary feet fell soft on a good, serviceable dark-red drugget, which matched in colour the flock-paper on the walls.
1964, Coastal Engineering Research Center (U.S.), Technical Memorandum - U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Coastal Engineering Research Center, page 69:
Very fine, well-sorted, clean sand with no shells.
2020 June 2, Amy Woodyatt, “Scientists say they have found the cleanest air on Earth”, in CNN[1]:
Scientists believe they have identified the world’s cleanest air, free from particles caused by human activity, located over the Southern Ocean, which surrounds Antarctica.
"Serious as cognitohazard." Lillihammer danced down the corridor towards them, doing little pirouettes and leaping from toe to toe. "Reuben Wirth no longer exists. Gonna have to get Forsythe to do that brain scan to make sure I'm clean, but otherwise yeah. Poof."
Ah! let me knot be fool'd, sweet saints. I trust / That I am whole, and clean, and meet for Heaven.
1914, Parliamentary Debates, volume 168, New Zealand, page 195:
I do not think there is any member in this House who will not agree that that is the clean thing to do. Any member sitting on the Government benches will admit in private that that is the proper course for members who break faith.
Ten months sober, I must admit Just because you're clean, don't mean you don't miss it Ten months older, I won't give in Now that I'm clean, I'm never gonna risk it
Free from (or showing no signs of) corrupt, unlawful, and/or sinister conduct or connections (and (of criminal, driving, etc. records) therefore without restrictions or penalties).
quotations ▼
2009 May 26, John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, Yale University Press, →ISBN:
It was my dream to be a Soviet spy. The vetting process started, and I was “clean”: no Jews in either my background or my wife's, no relatives abroad, already a member of the Soviet Communist Party, high marks on exams, three foreign languages, no dissident inclinations[…]
2016 April 5, Sylvia Day, One with You, St. Martin's Griffin, →ISBN:
"If the Tramells hadn't passed away, we still wouldn't know. The background check was clean." "How can it be clean, for fuck's sake?" I knocked back the whiskey in one swallow. "Eva's mother used Monica's name, birthdate, and family history, but she never opened a line of credit, which is how most identity theft is discovered."
Unlike you, I’ve never caused any accidents — my record is still clean!
2024 November 8, Luz Pena, “California's gas prices could have major increase with passing of new fuel standards”, in ABC7 News[4]:
In a press release, CARB expanded on their decision. "The LCFS reduces air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions by setting a declining carbon intensity target for transportation fuels used in California; producers that don't meet established benchmarks buy credits from those that do. This system has generated $4 billion in annual private sector investment toward a cleaner transportation sector."
When ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not make clean riddance of corners of thy field.
2023 July 18, Arianne Shahvisi, Arguing for a Better World: How Philosophy Can Help Us Fight for Social Justice, Penguin, →ISBN, page 1:
The clean thrill of getting the right answer gave me a sense of efficacy and rootedness. Even so, on tests at school I rarely got good grades, because I had a terrible habit of not showing my work.
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
When people complained the songs were too hard, Kyle's clean vocals could bail out the band. Adding cleans would set off a chain reaction though - Kyle's crisp, clear presence could be seen as "betraying" the raw assault that Mike inflicts on the fans with his screams and growls.
2016, Jay Shields, “Tech Fest 2016”, in Fraser Mutch, editor, Elite Online Mag, number 78, page 155:
Vocalist Kaan is impeccable in his performance engaging with the crowd and soulfully executing both searing screams and hauntingly melodic cleans.
2023 April 17, Jake Richardson, “10 Best Clean Singers in Metalcore”, in Loudwire[5], archived from the original on 17 August 2024:
The band's more recent output has seen a small amount of cleans find their way in, but for the most part, the Pennsylvania boys rely on the kind of devastating vocal delivery that can be heard on monumental career highlights such as "Marianas Trench."
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Moreover, I find there are some Words now in French which are turned to a Countersense […]Cocu is taken for one whose Wife is light, and hath made him a passive Cuckold; whereas clean contrary, Cocu, which is the Cuckow, doth use to lay her Eggs in another Bird's Nest.
1897, Richard Marsh, The Beetle:
So, since all my pains in his direction were clean thrown away, there was nothing left for me but to scurry back to Marjorie, — so I scurried, and I found the house empty, no one there, and Marjorie gone.
1927, Ernest Bramah, Max Carrados Mysteries:
It strikes me that you have come off uncommonly easy, seeing as how things were. No mess, no breakages, no odds and ends from every room that you can't remember until it's too late to claim. Just one big lot taken clean.
1951 October, William B. Stocks, “A Few Miles from Huddersfield”, in Railway Magazine, page 701:
A feat sometimes achieved by outstanding local athletes is to throw a cricket ball clean over the top [of the viaduct].
1956 September, F. F. Nicholls, “Neyland, A Forgotten Harbour”, in Railway Magazine, page 632:
Now they were faced with the problem of a northerly blow, which could soon send a heavy swell clean into the bay.
The huge square box, parquet-floored and high-ceilinged, had been arranged to display a suite of bedroom furniture designed and made in the halcyon days of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when modish taste was just due to go clean out of fashion for the best part of the next hundred years.
