1
as in to tidy (up)
to make a place neat and orderly by removing extraneous stuff
you're expected to clean up after you use the workroom
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
2
as in to censor
to remove objectionable parts from
cleaned up the rock star's interview before publishing it in the newspaper
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
3
as in to eradicate
to destroy all traces of
hurriedly cleaned up the mess that they had created in the kitchen
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
as in killing
an exceptionally large return
The couple made a cleanup when they flipped the house.
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of clean (up)
Tammy Murga, San Diego Union-Tribune, 18 Mar. 2025
With enough contaminated soil to fill about 40,000 dump trucks, the Bien Hoa air base is the largest deposit of postwar pesticides remaining in Vietnam after a decadeslong cleanup campaign.
—Anna Maria Barry-Jester, ProPublica, 17 Mar. 2025
And 12 miles to the east is a former military waste disposal site, which has been designated as a Superfund site, or one that needs longtime hazardous material cleanup.
—Cyrus Farivar, Forbes, 17 Mar. 2025
In others, municipalities shirked their legal requirement to share permit data with Kaegi’s office or shared it in a format that required time-consuming cleanup.
—A.d. Quig, Chicago Tribune, 16 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for clean (up)
Noun
Listen to this article The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will not reconsider its denial to investigate whether the Tijuana River Estuary qualifies as a Superfund site, a designation given to the most contaminated places in the country needing long-term cleanup.
—Tammy Murga, San Diego Union-Tribune, 18 Mar. 2025
With enough contaminated soil to fill about 40,000 dump trucks, the Bien Hoa air base is the largest deposit of postwar pesticides remaining in Vietnam after a decadeslong cleanup campaign.
—Anna Maria Barry-Jester, ProPublica, 17 Mar. 2025
And 12 miles to the east is a former military waste disposal site, which has been designated as a Superfund site, or one that needs longtime hazardous material cleanup.
—Cyrus Farivar, Forbes, 17 Mar. 2025
In others, municipalities shirked their legal requirement to share permit data with Kaegi’s office or shared it in a format that required time-consuming cleanup.
—A.d. Quig, Chicago Tribune, 16 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for clean (up)
Recent Examples of Synonyms for clean (up)
Verb
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Listen to this article A meeting to discuss whether a Connecticut library will censor LGBTQ+ content was canceled Thursday evening when too many people attended.—
Staff report,
Hartford Courant,
21 Mar. 2025
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Whether in support of Israel, Palestine, or even Hamas, the First Amendment prevents the government from punishing or censoring them.—
Jeff Zeman,
Sun Sentinel,
18 Mar. 2025
Verb
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All of these externals can lead to the breakage of individual strands, weathering (and even eradicating) protective cuticles and any potential for lustrousness and leading instead to a frazzled and frizzy mane.—
Kiana Murden,
Vogue,
25 Mar. 2025
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States reporting measles cases Measles was declared eradicated in the USA in 2000, but recent sporadic outbreaks have been linked to international travelers and numerous unvaccinated people, based on CDC reports.—
Janet Loehrke,
USA TODAY,
25 Mar. 2025
Noun
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The attack sparked outrage on social media, with politicians from the north condemning the killings.—
Dyepkazah Shibayan,
Los Angeles Times,
29 Mar. 2025
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The Homicide Unit is investigating the circumstances surrounding the killing, police said.—
Harriet Ramos,
Fort Worth Star-Telegram,
28 Mar. 2025
Verb
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Ward shortened his drop and threw a strike in the small sliver of space just before the hash mark.—
Ted Nguyen,
New York Times,
28 Mar. 2025
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On March 7, a UK judge shortened the sentence of the group’s founder, Roger Hallam, for disrupting a traffic event after an appeal.—
Angelica Villa,
ARTnews.com,
28 Mar. 2025
Verb
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Its streets were power washed, graffiti was erased, trash was cleared, and the city’s sizable homeless population was relocated.—
Carson Becker,
The Washington Examiner,
28 Mar. 2025
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This year was a step in the right direction for the program, but that’s all erased if Kevin Willard leaves.—
Baltimore Sun staff,
Baltimore Sun,
28 Mar. 2025
Noun
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The idea of an investment obligation is based on the French model so that the profits [from the streamers] don’t flow untaxed to the USA, so to speak.—
Scott Roxborough,
HollywoodReporter,
26 Mar. 2025
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Southern European countries wanted contributions to be relative to their GDP and asked the EU to find other funding sources, such as the remaining profits generated by Russia's frozen assets.—
Paul Du Quenoy,
MSNBC Newsweek,
26 Mar. 2025
Verb
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In the making of the film, what was initially planned as a five-month shoot stretched over a year, leaving Coppola to edit over a million feet of film, and was plagued by disaster after disaster.—
Paul Fitzgerald,
Rolling Stone,
18 Mar. 2025
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The collection has been brilliantly edited and translated by Gwendolyn Harper (who also works part-time in The New Yorker’s fiction department).—
Graciela Mochkofsky,
The New Yorker,
18 Mar. 2025
Verb
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Even before abolishing the department, the Trump administration blocked student loan forgiveness and repayment plans, slashed department staffing, and wiped the federal watchdog agency tasked with overseeing student loan servicing and collections.—
Sareen Habeshian,
Axios,
21 Mar. 2025
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What is Trump's justification for abolishing the department?—
Joey Garrison,
USA TODAY,
20 Mar. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Clean (up).” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/clean%20%28up%29. Accessed 31 Mar. 2025.
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